The Profiler
by routineriotx
Summary: When Aubrey Bentley joined the BAU, she didn't expect anything more than fulfilling her father's legacy and working to erase her past. After officially joining the team, she realizes she's about to get handed a lot more than that. Derek Morgan X OC, rated T for language and minor sexual scenes
1. The New Girl

"We're getting another new member?"

BAU and FBI agent Derek Morgan stared at his commanding officer, Aaron Hotchner, who had just dropped the news to him that they would be expecting one last person to add on to their profiling team. Derek laughed and shook his head, saying, "Don't you think this team's getting a little too big? It used to be just me, you, Gideon, and a few temps. What's with the permanent team you're making? Planning on putting us into a company football game?"

"We need to have a more diverse group, more brainpower. This girl has had more rigorous training than Elle- that wasn't my move to add her. JJ and Penelope don't really count as part of our team, and I think you can count Gideon and Reid as one, so we're already down to three, making this girl the fourth member," Hotchner said. Derek's eyes narrowed.

"What do you mean, this girl has more rigorous training? Why haven't I seen her around Quantico before?"

"She wasn't trained here, she was trained at home." Derek's eyebrows flew up in surprise, as Hotchner put his hands out to subdue him. "Before you get angry..."

"Too late for that," Derek muttered.

"... you need to realize that she had better training than you and I did." Derek looked at Hotchner with doubt-filled uncertainty as the door opened and Gideon and Reid walked in with a beautiful girl, her blonde hair just past her chest and pulled into a half-up, half-down do. Her blue eyes looked over at Derek and smiled with her mouth, as Hotchner smiled and stepped forward. "Agent Bentley, it's nice to meet you."

The name struck a chord with Derek, but he couldn't figure out where from. He stepped forward with Hotchner instead, who introduced him and said, "Agent Aubrey Bentley, this is Agent Derek Morgan, he's part of our team as well."

"Wow, you guys certainly have a big team. I already met Elle, JJ, and Penelope," the girl said smoothly, her voice pulling Derek in. She put out a hand toward him and he took it, meeting her eyes squarely as she smiled again. "Nice to meet you, Derek."

"Nice to meet you as well," Derek said. Gideon and Hotchner shared a look, and even Reid look a little bit surprised because Derek was actually playing nice with the new girl he had been ready to riot against not moments before.

JJ walked out of the office and said, "Meeting, now."

Hotchner looked over at Aubrey. "You want to sit this one out?"

Aubrey grinned at him, her eyes flitting over to Derek for a few seconds before she met eyes with her new boss. She said playfully, "I'm ready to start."

Derek couldn't help himself from smiling, either.

They walked up to the meeting room and took their respective seats around the table, joined by Elle and Penelope soon after. JJ began giving them the run down- someone was setting fires at a college campus in Phoenix, and they had no leads, per usual. They packed up their files and headed to the plane, piling on as Derek took a seat.

Aubrey, Hotchner, Gideon, and JJ each took one of the four seats near the table as they spread out the case files. Derek watched as Gideon easily joked around with Aubrey, making her smile and comfortable, and he found his eyebrows furrow in confusion.

"He's the reason she's here, you know," Reid said as he took a seat across from Derek. He looked over in surprise, and found Reid pulling a large book out of his bag, presumably to read on the flight. When Reid looked up, he seemed a little surprised to see Derek looking back at him.

"What do you mean?" Derek asked in confusion, his eyes flitting over to Aubrey and then back to Spencer.

"Gideon's the reason she got this job. He's like a second father to her," Spencer said as he put in his earbuds and all but dismissed Derek, who chuckled at Spencer's weird behavior. He looked over to where Aubrey was focusing on the case files, and she looked up and smiled at him, almost challengingly.

Derek was never one to turn down a challenge.

He stood up once they had hit the necessary altitude for movement, and they all crowded around the chairs at the table. He perched on Aubrey's arm rest as he eyed the same file she was holding, looking at the facts presented before them. To Derek's surprise, Aubrey was the one who started brainstorming, quickly stating, "Most arsonists set fires due to two stressors: loss of love, and loss of job. While most arsonists are males between the ages of 17 and 27, but the thing is, this isn't really an arsonist. It's a serial arsonist, and that makes things a little bit different. The fact that there's been multiple targets narrows the chance of it being a girl, as they mostly set fires for revenge."

Aubrey received impressed looks from around the plane. Gideon didn't look surprised; instead he said, "I don't think any of that really narrows down much. Not definitively."

Derek understood now why Reid had told him about Gideon and Aubrey's connection. He saw Aubrey bristle a little bit, as if to fight her father like a teenager, but then settled down when she realized he was now also her boss. She pressed her lips together as Gideon continued rattling off his own profile, making sure to use Aubrey's facts to help him.

When they landed, they all headed to the hotel with their bags first, then to the campus police department to figure out where they would all be assigned for the case. Aubrey felt like her first case was a whirlwind; she was assigned to head out to the crime scene with Hotchner and Reid, then went back for some more profiling. There were interviews of students, deciphering an anonymous call on the tip line, and some coercing Chem students to help them out. In the end, it turned out to be one of the Chem students helping them with severe OCD and even more severe religious beliefs, setting fires and killing those who she believed God wanted her to test. After saving her last potential victims, they shipped her off with a gunshot wound to the leg to the asylum she needed for treatment.

After the plane had already taken off for home, Gideon and Spencer began their routine chess game. Spencer, thinking because he had succeeded in thinking out of the box on the case, thought he could defeat Gideon; Aubrey, who watched every one of their moves carefully, knew this wouldn't be true. When Spencer lost, as Aubrey predicted, she was quick to console him.

"You're over thinking it, Spence," Aubrey said without taking the attention off of the tabloid in her hands. She turned the magazine to the side, critiquing the fashion disaster that was one of Jessica Alba's award show dresses. When she felt Spencer's eyes move toward her to look at her questioningly, she said, "You always over think it. Remember what Gideon told you?"

"If you think you can do it, go ahead and try," Spencer said, acting childish once again. Gideon leant back into his seat, obviously welcoming the challenge of Spencer's more creative counterpart. Hotchner smiled knowingly, understanding immediately that Aubrey would somehow figure out a way to stand above Spencer again. Derek snorted, but kept his eye on the game, curious to see what could happen. Elle stayed asleep in her chair.

"Fine," Aubrey said, squeezing past Hotchner as she took Spencer's seat across from Gideon, who met her eyes evenly. Aubrey's eyes sparkled as she playfully asked, "Ready?"

Gideon nodded as Aubrey set up the game again. The game seemed to go on forever to its spectators, especially Spencer, who feared he'd be proven wrong, and Derek, who thought chess was the most pointless game ever created. Aubrey began a countdown to checkmate, the number slowly decreasing until, miraculously, she won the game.

"How... ?" Gideon asked, looking up at her. Spencer looked as though he might cry; Derek, laughing both at his expression and in rejoice due to the fact that the game was over, patted his back consolingly. Hotchner smiled again, resting his feet up and closing his eyes again as Gideon gave Aubrey what she called his 'ghost of a genius' stare.

"I did learn from the best, did I not?" she asked, getting up from her chair as she squeezed past Derek to return to her seat. She placed her earbuds in her ears and picked up her tabloid again, pretending as if nothing had happened. Derek found himself continuously looking at her throughout the flight, trying to profile her, but to no avail. He had a feeling she put up a wall of superiority to hide something deeper underneath, something that even he had difficulty with reading.

When they returned to the office, Aubrey was quick to leave, saying she had dinner plans with some friends she wanted to make. JJ laughed and said to Derek, almost sardonically, "I hope she realizes we here at the BAU don't have much of an outside life."

"She'll learn soon enough," Derek said, taking a seat at his desk as he began doing his part of the paperwork so he wouldn't have to worry about it tomorrow. No matter how hard he tried to focus on his report, he found his mind going back to the mystery that was Aubrey Bentley. How did a girl like her know how to profile like that, almost like Reid, in that fact-filled method of hers? He knew very little about her, although her name seemed so familiar...

"Bentley!" Derek shouted suddenly. Elle looked over skeptically from her desk, and smirked at him.

"Daydreaming, Morgan?" She asked. Derek turned and glared at her.

"Now I remember why the name clicked in my mind. Go to a search real quick and look up Aubrey Bentley on the data base." Elle gave him another skeptical look, and Derek huffed. "We're not doing anything illegal. We're doing a simple background check. I just want her father's name."

"Okay, you freak," Elle said, searching the name. Derek recognized the name that had popped up in his head- William Bentley, a former FBI agent who had been killed in action several years prior.

"Wow," Elle said, whistling, "guess FBI runs in the family."

"What looks familiar to you about the name?" Derek asked, pointing to the father's name. "Think Gideon..."

Elle had to focus for a few moments, and Derek could see her mentally turning over every file she had every read regarding Gideon. Her mouth fell into an 'O' and her eyes went wide as she realized she knew the name, too. Just in case Derek thought of some different correlation, Elle turned to him and said,

"He was killed in the Boston bombing Gideon caused."


	2. The Non-Challenge

Moments after Elle and Derek had found out about Aubrey's connection to Gideon, Gideon himself walked up. Elle, being the hothead she was, was quick to stand up and confront him about the obvious bias he had in including Aubrey on the team.

"Sir," she said, garnering his attention, "I'd like to talk to you about Agent Bentley."

Gideon looked over at Elle curiously. "What about her?"

"I don't think she exactly has a place in our unit." Gideon's eyebrows both raised sharply, as did Derek's. "I worked very hard to be in this position, and I had to climb, crawl, and claw my way here. She simply skips in from God-knows-where and gets a spot, and then we find out that her father was one of the agents you lost in the Boston bombing. Was she a favor?"

"Agent Greenaway," Gideon said in that overly-professional and wonderfully stoic way of his, "the position was offered to Agent Bentley before you were offered your position. She had not decided to take the position until recently due to certain events. She went to training in Quantico, and also had personal training on the side. She is an intelligent young woman who is a wonderful addition to our team... the same words I said in your honor a few weeks ago when Agent Hotchner and I went to protest for more spots on our team. We created an additional spot for you, Agent Greenaway. I should rather wish you should repay me with only respect, and Agent Bentley as well."

Gideon continued the walk to his office as Derek laughed at Elle's expense. She shoved him in the shoulder and said, "Thanks for backing me up, jerk."

"Hey, I don't agree with what you said, so..." Derek said. Elle rolled her eyes, grabbing her purse from her desk as she swung it over her shoulder.

"Well, that's my sign that it's time to go. I can only handle one spanking a day. I'll see you tomorrow morning, Morgan," Elle said, walking out the door. Derek watched her leave, then returned back to his paperwork for another hour before heading home himself.

When he walked in the next morning to work, the office was already alive. The moment he stepped out of the elevator, he got a text to come to the meeting room, where already, they were discussing a case. He snuck in just as Hotchner began his speech.

"We've got a bomber in Palm Beach, Florida," Hotchner said. Gideon and Derek both looked over quickly at Aubrey, but her eyes were on the files in front of her, stoic. Derek was ready to look away and call it professionalism, but the way Gideon let his look linger on her made it seem like he was waiting for some outburst, some inferior feelings to push their way through.

Derek was bounced back as Hotchner slid a file toward him, nodding at him as he said, "Morgan, you're our explosions expert here. I want you to look at these fragment pictures and tell me what you see."

Derek filed through the pictures before coming to to a conclusion. "Pipe bombs in a package. Simple design, but all you need to do is tip the package slightly in order to trigger it."

"The liquid wouldn't have been able to make it through screening at a postal office," Aubrey added from her seat, still rifling through the file. All eyes were on her, most of them concerned. As if she knew they were all waiting for her to snap, she kept her eyes down and prevented eye contact as she concluded, "The UnSub must've brought the package to the door himself."

"So far, it doesn't seem as if this is a full-blown terrorist attack," Gideon said slowly, shaking his head. "I wouldn't raise the terror level or inform the public yet."

"Too late," JJ said as she walked in and turned on the TV, which showed coverage of the bombing. "This is just a local channel. It's been picked up by all the big names- CNN, Fox, and such. I bet that they have to raise the terror level now."

"You'd be right," Hotchner said, sighing. Another explosion went off on the TV, and Aubrey jumped as everybody except Derek, who she had managed to hit in the chest, looked over at the TV. He looked over at her in concern, and she met his eyes, laughing a little bit.

"I'm just a little on edge. Too much caffeine," she said, obviously lying. Derek gave her a disbelieving look, but she quickly stood up and grabbed the files in front of her. She walked out of the room at Hotchner's dismissal and returned to her desk. Derek hung back while everybody else filed out of the room, and Hotchner looked up at him curiously after realizing he was still standing there.

"Yes, Morgan?" Hotchner asked slowly.

"I was wondering if I could stay back and look at the bomb fragments when they get here," Derek said quickly. Hotchner gave him a questioning look, knowing that there was more. "I think it'd be smart if you asked Aubrey to stay back."

Hotchner stood up straight. "What makes you say that?"

"She's all jittery. Obviously this is getting to her. Only her second case and its one that hits close to home?" Derek shook his head. "I don't think it's smart for her to be close to this thing so soon in her career. Get Gideon or something to talk to her, but I think she needs to stay back here with me."

"I'll take it into consideration," Hotchner said seriously as Derek nodded and left the room. He watched from his desk as Hotchner pulled Aubrey aside and probably proposed Derek's plan to her. She nodded and although Derek could see she was fighting to go into the field, the relief nearly flooded her face.

When she returned to their desk area, she grinned at Derek as she sat on the edge of his desk. She told him, "A little birdie said you requested that I stay with you. While I think it's sweet you want to spend more time with me, don't think it's flattery."

"I just wanted you here so I could learn all your tics and know how to trigger them," Derek said just as flirtatiously. Aubrey scoffed and slid off his desk, giving him a playful glare.

"If it's a game you want, it's a game you'll get, Morgan," she promised him, walking back to her desk.

Derek couldn't wait for the game to begin.

The game turned out to not be much fun for either one of them.

They spent the next few hours piecing together the bomb as if it were the most intricate and complex puzzle in the world. Aubrey was in charge of coffee, as well as aiding with a new eye since Derek was sure he beat the world record for longest time period without blinking several different times. Derek finally completed most of the structure as Aubrey came in again after helping Penelope out on a conference call, trying to gather additional information about the case.

"How's it going in here?" Aubrey asked, putting down another cup of coffee for Derek. He thanked her under his breath as he grabbed the three extra fragments he had, trying to push them together.

"I just have these three pieces," Derek said as he got up from the chair and stretched his torso, walking over to the corner of the room. Aubrey took his seat and grabbed the three pieces as he had, investigating them. Derek turned to the board, where he had drawn a schematic of the bomb pieces, and he said, "I have no idea where they go."

"Derek," Aubrey's shaky voice said. Derek turned around quickly and found she had gone pale, holding one of the pieces. He looked at her curiously and she said, "I've studied Bale's case file over and over again. I've memorized the schematic for his bomb."

"You're kidding me," Derek said lowly. Aubrey shook her head.

"I might be trying to make this something it's not, so you might want to check my work... but I'm pretty sure that this piece slides in the top like this," Aubrey said, sliding it right in. "It would've been part of a longer rod that stuck to the top- Bale's signature."

"Damn it," Derek cussed. He turned back to Aubrey quickly and asked, "Are you okay?"

"What?" Aubrey asked in surprise, seeming caught off-guard. Derek saw she was ready to lie, and so he quickly sat down on the table in front of her, meeting her eyes.

"I know that you wouldn't stay back here with me unless something was wrong. It's not like you're super enthused about putting together bomb fragments when I know you live for profiling out in the field. I think this case is affecting you," Derek said. Aubrey pressed her lips together.

"You saw my file, didn't you?" She asked quietly. Derek didn't affirm nor deny her assumption, and she laughed. "I should've known that my connection to the FBI wouldn't stay quiet for long. Yeah, I didn't go because explosions scare the shit out of me, okay? The fact that my dad died for a psycho's sexual release and that I didn't even have a body to bury..."

"Hey," Derek said, moving down to kneel on the ground as he rested his hand on Aubrey's thigh. "Bale is behind bars for what he did. I know that will never, ever be enough for you, and that's okay. But you can't let him get to you like this. Aubrey, I'm sorry to say it, but this is part of the job, dealing with explosions and terrorists. You must get used to this."

"I know, I know." Aubrey said, breathing in slowly. Derek watched her carefully before she calmed down, giving him a small smile. "You're much nicer than I originally gave you credit for."

"What'd you do, profile me?" Derek asked, almost jokingly. Aubrey smirked and shrugged, almost guiltily. He knew Aubrey still needed some help to calm down, and he knew profiling would help her immensely, so he challenged her by saying, "I want to see you work on something even Gideon is still struggling with. Analyze me."

"Well, there's no fun in that," Aubrey said, denying Derek's offer as she finally returned to her normal self. Derek, however, being the alpha male he was, looked at her, offended she passed up on the opportunity.

"Why? Do you think I'm too easy to analyze? Because I just said that even Gideon doesn't have it one hundred percent correct. Spencer and Hotchner are a little over three-fourths the way there, and Elle is hopelessly behind all of them. What makes you think you can pass all of them?" Derek asked.

"I'm not saying I can pass any of them. I'm saying analyzing you would bring me nothing except to prove to you something you already know: that I'm capable of doing it. I will profile stranger after stranger, but there is no fun in profiling someone like you, someone who's willing to be read. I like a challenge, and you just don't give me one," Aubrey said honestly. Derek glared at her, and Aubrey winked at him flirtatiously. "Don't get too upset, sweetheart. You're not the only one."

Derek's phone rang, and Aubrey left the room. He watched her leave, wondering what it was about her that drew him in, that made her so easy to like despite her sarcasm and her sass.

He had a feeling his questions wouldn't be answered anytime soon.


	3. The Fanatic

"Ah, newbie! Mind if I join you?" Aubrey heard someone exclaim. She looked up to meet the vibrant eyes of the BAU's analyst, Penelope Garcia, a girl she remembered as being only extremely warm and humorous upon first meeting her. Ever since her job had started, she hadn't had much time to talk to her, one-on-one. Aubrey was glad she was finally getting the chance.

"Of course not," Aubrey said, scooting her food back down to her side of the table. Penelope sat down across from her like they were back in grade school again, unpacking her lunchbox and setting it all out perfectly. Once her food was placed in the right positions, she looked up at Aubrey with a friendly smile.

"So, tell me. How's it been working all day with the smoldering Agent Morgan?" Penelope asked. Aubrey laughed as she closed Bale's file, sliding it away from her food as she began to eat with Penelope.

"He definitely knows his bombs, and he's definitely determined. I can't get a read on him, though. First impression was extremely confident to the point of arrogant, but he has a sweet side, too?" Penelope nodded to affirm this, all the while taking a bite out of her sandwich. "Guys like him don't have sweet sides. What's his baggage?"

Penelope swallowed, choking a little as she laughed. "His baggage?"

"Yeah. All guys with a sensitive side either don't got anything else going for them," Aubrey said suggestively, earning another laugh from Penelope, "or they have serious baggage that scarred them long ago that made them actually able to read women's true feelings."

"Well, he was raised by as single mom. His dad was a cop and was killed when he was really young. He also grew up in the hood. That's the only baggage I think he's got, and trust me, I highly doubt that he hasn't got anything else going for him," Penelope said as Aubrey snorted, almost spitting out her bite of sandwich as they both laughed.

"What are you two ladies giggling about?" Derek asked, walking up with a pile of papers in one of his hands.

"Boys, of course," Aubrey said in a Valley girl voice that caused Derek's lips to tug into a smile. She nudged her head toward the pile of paper in his hands and asked, "What's that?"

"Our new assignment," Derek said as he took a seat, then split the pack into thirds. He slid one section to each of them as Penelope and Aubrey both gave him looks of disgust. He sighed and said, "Come on, my girls, don't look at me like that. I need help on this, and Aubrey, this is definitely in your job description. I need you to help go through these. We're looking for any creepy messages between our UnSub and Bale."

"Are these Bale's inbox messages?" Aubrey asked. Derek looked over at her carefully.

"Yeah," Penelope affirmed upon seeing the username at the top of the printout. She shuddered and said, "I don't get why they allow inmates to have e-mail. Letters and visits, I get- those can be monitored. But e-mails and access to the Internet are a whole different thing. This guy was inspired through the boards online where Bale posted almost daily. That's sickening he's still allowed contact with the outer world."

Derek looked over at Aubrey, who was patiently and politely looking through e-mails. When there was no response, Penelope realized her mistake as she gasped and said, "Aubrey, I'm sorry. I didn't even..."

"No, it's okay, really," Aubrey said with a forgiving smile. "You guys don't need to tiptoe around me. We're going to have to talk about the UnSubs like this, and I need to get used to it. While I may seem a little sensitive right now, I just need some roughing up at the edges. Think of it as training me to be a better agent. I appreciate it, I really do."

Derek looked at Aubrey with respect as she turned to him and asked, "What am I looking for, exactly?"

"Any message that particularly alarms you. These are all from Walker." Aubrey looked at Derek with surprise, who raised his hands in defense. "Guy's obsessed with him. If you got in contact with your favorite boy band when you were a teen, what would you do? This is ten times worse than that."

Aubrey sighed and began speed-reading through her stack, finishing well before Derek and Penelope as she grabbed some of their extras. When they were done, they looked back through the particularly alarming ones, as Penelope pulled out one from her pile.

"What about this, the 'don't let them take you alive' one?" Penelope asked. Derek and Aubrey shared a look before Derek grabbed it from Penelope's hands, scanning over it as he grabbed his phone, dialing Hotchner frantically as he had gotten an update from the team only moments before that they were about to corner Walker.

"What I'd do?" Penelope asked in confusion, turning to Aubrey for guidance.

"Penelope, I love you already and I consider you to be my closest friend here so far, but let me just say you are good at being an analyst and we'll stick to our jobs," Aubrey said, patting her hand. Penelope smiled at her, taking the backhanded compliment well as Derek turned back to them.

"Hotchner just cleared out the building. They should be okay," Derek said. Aubrey let out a big breath and nodded before her phone began ringing. She looked at Derek curiously when she saw it was Gideon's number. She showed him the caller ID and he shook his head, saying, "He's not with Hotch."

Aubrey stood up and asked, "Hello?"

"Aubrey," Gideon said quickly. "I don't have much time. Bale has agreed to cooperate with us, but he's made a deal to move to an asylum instead of a prison. I want your opinion."

The fact that Bale was getting what he wanted made Aubrey's blood boil, but she knew it was unprofessional. There was a hostage sitting at the police station with a bomb strapped to his chest that Walker created in emulation of Bale. Who would she be to tell Gideon it was wrong?

That's when she realized- Gideon wasn't asking for permission. He was testing her.

"Give him the deal," she said coldly, hanging up the phone. Derek looked at her curiously, and after she explained, he looked like he understood.

"Hotch did the same thing with me when I started. It's like a loyalty test, only it's your loyalty to your profession, not to your past. I think we've made some progress today." When Aubrey looked over at him curiously, he smiled as Penelope returned to her computer room. "At the beginning of this day, do you think you would've said to give him the deal?"

"I would've," Aubrey said, but she was unsure. Derek smiled again, obviously reading her confused feelings as he nodded.

"I failed mine, if it's any consolidation," Derek said before moving to his desk. Aubrey watched him leave with curiosity and surprise. While Derek did seem to be passionate and intense about most things, characteristics that could cause emotion to get in the way of his work, he also seemed more determined than he did anything else, and Aubrey knew that would get any worker far in the BAU. She wondered what Derek Morgan's weakness was that Hotchner knew to use against him.

When Gideon called not twenty minutes later, Aubrey was satisfied with the news. Bale had lied to Gideon's face, but Gideon had called his bluff and saved the hostage. Bale was to stay in a worse prison than before, the hostage was alive, and Aubrey was allowed to leave the office once she finished her report of her and Derek's work they had done that day, from her point of view.

One hour after Gideon's call and still two hours before the team was supposed to get home, Aubrey packed up her bag and went home, Bale's case file in hand. It had a few stains on it, and it was definitely worn and torn as she had spent many nights flipping through it. She was gazing at it as she waited for the elevator's doors to close, but then someone called out, "Hold it!"

She quickly jabbed the 'open door' button, and Derek slid in. He gave her a small smile, saying, "Didn't think you could get rid of me that easily, did you?"

Aubrey crossed her fingers and smiled at him, sarcastically saying, "Here's to hoping."

"Ouch," Derek said, putting a hand over his heart as the doors closed. "So, where you heading out to?"

"Probably home," Aubrey said, her fingers tightening around the edge of Bale's file. Derek looked down, then back up at her curiously. Aubrey sighed and said, "I know what you're thinking, that this isn't healthy for me to do, but it acts as motivation..."

Derek put up a hand, saying, "Stop right there. You're coming out with me tonight."

Aubrey stared at him. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me, loud and clear. We are going out tonight. You are not going to go home and stare at that file and wither away and wish you could get your hands at Bale, okay?" Derek asked her. She stared at him, and when the doors opened, he went the other way, calling over his shoulder, "I'll be at your house to pick you up at 9."

"How do you know where I live?!" Aubrey yelled after him.

The only response she got back was the echo of his laugh.

When Derek pulled up an hour later, Aubrey was already walking out. She waved to him as he marveled at her dress, which seemed perfect for the night he had planned ahead- a little dinner, a little clubbing, nothing too formal yet not too inappropriate for coworkers. Derek couldn't help but smile, knowing if the situation was different, Aubrey would be a one-night stand for him.

She got into the passenger's side of the car and asked, "Okay, Derek Morgan. Where are we going tonight?"

"We are going to the best night of your life." Aubrey snorted, and Derek laughed. "What was that?"

"It's my 'you're a cocky son of bitch' laugh," Aubrey commented back quickly. Derek looked over at her quickly, smirking at her.

"Okay, okay, you won't be saying that at the end of the night, I promise you," Derek said challengingly. Aubrey leant back in her seat, still smiling, as they made easy conversation the whole ride there. Dinner went off without a hitch, as did clubbing. Despite Derek's usual flow of girls attached to his hips, he found himself watching Aubrey dance with guys across the room. At first he blamed it on the fact that she had drunk a little at dinner and he felt responsible, but then he realized he was glad she was with him so he had an excuse to turn away the girls that prodded him.

As they got into that car that night, both exhausted from the workouts they had experienced at the club, they made jokes about the people they had met all the way until Derek pulled up in front of Aubrey's apartment. She looked over at Derek, and gave him the most genuine smile Derek had ever seen.

"While this wasn't the best night of my life, I did have a lot of fun." Derek smiled slowly at her, feeling something in him he hadn't in a while. "Thank you for welcoming me to the BAU, Der."

Derek smiled wide; he liked the shortening of his name. "It was my pleasure. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah, of course," Aubrey said as she got out of the car. "Good night."

Derek watched her walk safely into her house, staying a little bit longer just to watch her turn on the lights. He had never been his careful about dropping a girl off, not even Penelope or JJ.

What was it about Aubrey Bentley?


	4. The Influence

"So, do we do this every birthday?"

Aubrey was currently balancing a huge cake considering it was only for the team, which consisted of seven people. The words 'Happy 24th, Spencer' were scrawled across in bright blue icing, Spencer's favorite color.

JJ looked over at her and grinned. "Why, now looking to your birthday more?"

"Of course. If there's cake involved, I'll create separate identities with different birthdays if it means cake." JJ laughed as the elevator doors opened and they walked out carefully, JJ holding open the doors for Aubrey and making sure she didn't bump into any obstacles. They walked up behind Spencer as Aubrey slid the cake in front of him, garnering the attention of Derek, Elle, Gideon, and Hotchner as they placed a birthday hat on top of his head.

"Happy birthday, Spence!" JJ cried, squeezing him from behind. She lit up the candles as she told him, "Make a wish, and make it good."

Spencer thought for a second, obviously considering it, before he blew out the candles and JJ, being the mom she was, cut up the cake and started handing out pieces. They weren't ten minutes into celebrating and conversing that Hotchner came over and said, "Sorry to interrupt, but we've got a case. Let's head straight to the plane, we can go over it there."

"Grab your cake, and let's go," Aubrey said, swinging her go bag over her shoulder while still balancing her cake. She and JJ kept close to Spencer, trying to keep the celebration going by keeping his mind off of the case as long as they could.

When they finally got into the plane and up into the air, the celebration officially ended as Hotchner started going over the case details. The woman who was killed was the sixth victim in three weeks, which meant that the UnSub was escalating. All were strangled with wire or a similar weapon, raped, and left with their eyes glued open. The most curious thing of all, however, were poetic lines that appeared written in the fourth, fifth, and sixth victims' homes.

"It's a ballad about death," Spencer butted into Hotchner's speech. He finished off the line and said, "It's an old Renaissance ballad."

"So, we're looking for someone with Renaissance poetic knowledge?" Elle asked.

"No, it's very easy to find. You'd be surprised what you can find when you search 'death' on a search engine," Spencer said. Derek snorted, filing through his papers.

"No wonder you can't get a date, man," Derek said as Aubrey leant over and hit him in the shoulder.

"What Spencer is really trying to say is that anybody could get to this. Just because the poems are here, doesn't mean that it's someone who has a lot of knowledge about Renaissance ballads," Gideon said. "But I think we have found his signature. Also, this UnSub only posts the death side of the conversation, meaning he thinks he is death."

"Maybe there's another side to the conversations. People used to write poems about talking to death." Derek commented, obviously wanting in on the academic side that Spencer offered.

"Ballads," Spencer corrected him. Derek gave him an angry look as Aubrey looked over at Derek.

"Be nice to him, it's his birthday. It's not his fault that you don't know the difference," Aubrey said as Spencer gave her a thankful smile. Derek looked over at Aubrey, obviously a little offended and curious as to when he had opened himself up to ridicule from her.

"Whatever it may be, I think more studying of these poems could be useful," Hotchner said. "JJ, you'll go to the station and set up. Gideon, Morgan, and Aubrey, I want you three to go to the last crime scene. Reid and Elle, you'll stay with me at the station and we'll try to see if there's connections between the victims."

Once the assignments were handed out, everybody fell into their airplane habits: reading, listening to music, sleeping, playing chess. After Aubrey woke up from her hour long nap, traveled to the station, and left again for the crime scene, she found herself alone with Derek, who hadn't spoken a word to her ever since she had kind of backlashed at him on the plane.

"Look, Derek," Aubrey said as they waited for Gideon by the car. "I want to apologize for earlier, on the plane. I didn't mean to get on your case, it's just that someone has to stick up for Spencer. I feel like no one ever has."

"I usually do," Derek said quickly, defensively. Aubrey nodded slowly.

"Well, maybe you do, but you sure weren't being too nice to him on the plane, and it's his birthday." Derek looked over at Aubrey curiously, and she put up her hands defensively. "I'm just saying, maybe watch the attitude. I know Spencer feels inferior in all departments but intelligence, especially to you, so helping him out with girls instead of ridiculing him about not having one might be useful."

Derek took Aubrey's words into consideration, nodding. "Thanks. I didn't mean to snap at you, either."

"It's okay, I know I kind of overstepped my boundaries. Hopefully within a year or so, these reality checks won't be as needed or as awkward," Aubrey said as Derek cracked a smile at her and Gideon and Detective Martin came up to the car.

"Detective Martin here generously offered to drive us to the crime scene," Gideon said as explanation. Derek nodded as he held open the door for Aubrey as they got into the back seat together, discussing the case the whole way to the house of the most recent crime scene.

"So, why do I have to take you guys to investigate the scene, too? I'd like to think that my guys did a pretty good job of picking up whatever needed to be picked up," Detective Martin, sounding a little offended.

"Sir, with all due respect, your men aren't trained to 'pick up' what we see. We look for behavioral patterns, such as hesitation, shakiness in the writing, emotions that can be read through actions. The original report said several things were broken. With further investigation, we can determine the value of those items in respect to what they meant to the UnSub, and why he chose those things to smash," Aubrey said, quickly calming the detective's concerns as they pulled up to the house.

Gideon's phone rang, and the detective turned into his seat to look at Aubrey. "You can tell all of that by just looking at this already half-cleaned crime scene?"

Aubrey gave him a smile. "That, and much more, sir."

As they climbed out of the car, Gideon was obviously deep in discussion with Hotchner about something. Derek and Aubrey took in their surroundings carefully, looking for any easy access points for a criminal. Gideon finally hung up the phone and said, "There was another attempt."

Aubrey was the one to ask, "Attempt?"

"The woman's husband interrupted and the UnSub ran out." The detective turned back to his car, and Gideon called after him, "Where are you going?"

"To the crime scene," the detective said, looking confused. "Why aren't you?"

"Because half of our team is already there. We need to study this crime scene before something happens to it," Derek said, walking over to the detective. He put out his hand and said, "The next crime scene is nearby. Why don't you walk over, and we'll take the car?"

The detective looked a little unwillingly, but finally gave Derek the keys. Derek thanked him, then said, "Wait. The UnSub came in through the back door, right?"

"The side window, by the family room," the detective said before taking off in the direction of the next crime scene. Derek sighed and turned back to Aubrey and Gideon.

"I'm going to go come in through the window," Derek said, pointing over his shoulder. Aubrey nodded as she followed Gideon inside the house, finding the room where Derek would crawl into. She waited patiently as Derek crawled carefully through the window, crouching on the chair on the other side of the window.

"That wasn't that easy to maneuver, and I'm usually not humble enough to admit so," Derek said.

Aubrey cracked a smile as she said, "So, that means that our UnSub is probably very agile."

"I mean, there's no way a guy much bigger than me could crouch through that window," Derek added. Aubrey laughed again at his expense as she turned and went to go up the stairs to meet with Gideon. Derek called after her, "I'm very agile!"

She kept laughing until she came to the room where Gideon stood, studying every inch of it. While the broken cappuccino machine still lay in pieces on the floor, the bedspread had been taken and the rest of the room relatively clean, so it looked like an uninhabited house, which it now was. The only thing left from the crime scene besides the useless cappuccino machine fragments were the words on the mirror, a verse from the ballad Spencer had recited from memory.

Gideon was obviously onto something as he turned toward Aubrey and Derek, saying, "Call Hotch. We're ready to give a profile."

Not 30 minutes later, they were standing in front of the San Diego Police Department, who were waiting patiently with steno pads and pens. Hotchner, as usual, led the profile.

"The man we are looking for is organized. He is well-prepared, because he had his tools with him. It is also notable that he does not leave the tools there. This tells us that he is calm when he kills, because he can keep his mind together to ensure that he does not leave anything behind," Hotchner said.

"He needs a vehicle to get around the area he has been surveying," Aubrey spoke up. "It is probably a well kept vehicle, maybe even a company vehicle. Because these attacks occur during the day, it wouldn't be strange for something like a company vehicle to be parked outside a private house for a long period of time. It wouldn't set off the same alarms as an unfamiliar car would."

"We also think that he stalks the women," Derek added. "This goes with our theory that he has a company truck. He would have to sit in his car for long periods of time. If it looked like he was inspecting something from his car, or perhaps even doing work in it, he wouldn't set off any alarms. He obviously stalks them because he understands the rhythm of the households they live in- when certain people will be home, when they will be alone."

"Most importantly, and despite what was given to us, our UnSub is a white male," Gideon spoke.

"But that husband said that he saw a black man in his house," one of the police officers spoke up.

"That was an isolated incident. We're looking for an exploitative rapist, not someone who wears a ski mask, as the wife told us. And cross-racial murders with sexual components are very rare, nearly non-existent. We already have a suspect for that crime, and we will use him to pull the UnSub out by saying he is the culprit. The UnSub wants attention, so if we take it away from him, he will come out again," Elle said with a self-sufficient smile.

"Thank you for your time. We will leave now to go arrest the man for the previous attack," Hotchner said. While he, Derek, and Elle left to go be part of the arrest, JJ and Gideon sat down to work on a press release to have running when they brought back their scapegoat culprit to the station. Reid was off somewhere, probably reading his ballads, so Aubrey got a chance to look over all the evidence for the first time, really soaking it all in.

When Hotchner's task force came back with the scapegoat culprit, Aubrey had already set up tip line phones at each available desk, leaving six potential lines open. She had watched JJ's press release, which if that didn't hurt the real UnSub's ego, she didn't know what would.

They took their seats at the tip line phones, pairing up after each was manned. It seemed like an hour passed of idle conversation and bogus tips as Spencer, who obviously was still upset about Derek's comments from earlier in the day, commented suddenly, "You know, my smarts are the same reason that I can't get a girlfriend."

Aubrey, who was paired up with him, asked in surprise, "What?"

"My smarts. It spurns women," Spencer said. Aubrey shook her head.

"No, Spence, it really doesn't." He looked up at her, curiously and surprised. "Honestly, what turns girls away is the fact that you don't invite them in. When was the last time that you asked a girl to hang out with you or go on a date?"

"Never," Spencer said honestly.

"Well, there you go, there's your problem," Aubrey said as she answered another fake lead. Spencer looked surprised that he hadn't thought of it himself before, and was about to continue the conversation with Aubrey when she hung up the phone, but Detective Martin quickly signaled to them that they had the UnSub on the line.

"Line 6," JJ told them as Aubrey quickly hit the line button and put it on speaker phone. The UnSub started going off almost immediately, claiming he would get back at them for not giving him the attention deserved, and that he'd strike again the next day before hanging up. Despite Penelope's best attempts to track him, for some reason, she was unable to.

The fact that Penelope, their local tech genius, couldn't track the guy raised their alert a little bit. This meant that their UnSub was even more intelligent than they had previously given him credit for, and that meant they had to go into the arrest more carefully.

They set up a plan for the next day to basically stalk out all of the potential houses. They paired up and each took a section to supervise. Aubrey was conversing casually with Hotchner when they got a call from Gideon and Elle telling them of the next victim's address.

When they arrived, there was a baby screaming and crying in a high chair that Aubrey picked up and took outside as Hotchner traveled upstairs to help Elle and Gideon with the arrest. The mother came rushing out, unharmed, moments later, claiming her baby from Aubrey and thanking her profusely.

For Aubrey, her first rescue of sorts couldn't have gone better.

She was still thinking of the baby and his mother, thinking of what could've happened to both of them while she mindlessly watched Spencer and Gideon play chess. She watched, only half-interested, as Gideon handed Spencer his birthday git: two Redskins tickets. He told him to use them and ask out his first girl- JJ, a huge Redskins fan.

Spencer stared at him in surprise, before nodding and getting up to do so. Aubrey paid attention now, noticing the game board for the first time, as Spencer turned, moved one piece, and said, "Checkmate" for the first time against Gideon.

Gideon's face was immensely surprised as Spencer both defeated him and his inner self. Aubrey laughed at Gideon's expense as he turned toward her.

"I fear you may have influenced him too much," Gideon said as Aubrey laughed, settling back into her seat as she watched Spencer walk over to JJ and tentatively start a conversation.

"You're just worried because now there's two people who can beat you in chess," Aubrey said.

"You're right, you know." Aubrey laughed, and Gideon looked over at her and smiled. It was moments like these when Aubrey thought of her father, who was one of Gideon's very close friends for a long time. Gideon had been there when her father hadn't, and was honestly probably more of a father to her than her birth father was.

His smile softened as he said, "I'm really glad you're comfortable here."

Aubrey smiled herself and looked around the plane, at the people she already knew she'd put her life down on the line to protect: Derek, Elle, JJ, Spencer, Hotch, and Penelope, although she currently wasn't present. While she knew that she felt comfortable her, the thought didn't occur to her until Gideon pointed it out. She looked over at him and smiled.

"I'm glad I am, too."


	5. The Insider

"Morning, Aubrey."

Aubrey looked up from the case file she had been handed that morning within five seconds of stepping in the building. An US attorney's daughter had been kidnapped, and a ransom note had been sent. While she tried to struggle over the politics of it, she had forgotten other people rode the elevator as well, and was a bit surprised to see Derek and Spencer walk in together.

"Hey," Aubrey said as she took another sip of the coffee she was juggling in her other hand. "Did you guys already take a look at this?"

"Briefly. I've been trying to get a story out of Reid about how his date with JJ went," Derek said pointedly, looking back over at Spencer. He sighed, obviously fed up with being asked, but then he felt a nudge and saw Aubrey smiling at him just as expectantly. Derek said, "Come on, tell us."

"I told you, it's classified information," Spencer said as the elevator doors opened to the BAU's floor and he rushed out, eager to escape. Aubrey and Derek quickly walked out after him, making sure to flank him as they walked with him to their pit.

"Aw, Spence, you gotta tell us more than that," Aubrey practically begged as Agent Jones, one of the transcribers, walked up and put her hand on Derek's shoulder flirtatiously.

"Derek, I put the transcription of the latest prison interview on your desk. Don't be afraid to come to my office if you have questions about anything," she said to him, sultry in her voice as she walked away. Aubrey scoffed and rolled her eyes, taking another sip of her coffee.

"I don't get it," Spencer said thoughtfully. "What do you do that makes these women throw themselves over you?"

"Ask Aubrey," Derek said as they finally walked out into the pit. Aubrey rolled her eyes again.

"I wouldn't know considering I'm not throwing myself over you. Additionally, it's definitely not the cocky attitude that reels girls in, so Spence, there's one leg you have up," Aubrey said as she put her bag down. Derek made a face at her as Hotchner walked out of his office, beckoning to them to join him in the meeting room. As they walked together, Derek sided up next to Aubrey.

"You may not be throwing yourself over me now, Bentley, but you will be," Derek promised. Aubrey laughed.

"Nice try, Morgan, but you've got no such luck," Aubrey said as she sat down at the table, Derek smirking at her righteously from the other side of the table.

"You two, focus," Hotchner said, pulling up a picture of the ransom note on the screen. Everybody went quiet, reading through it and looking for behavior within the note- wording, the writing. Before Aubrey could finish her thoughts, Hotchner said, "This was written by the victim, as seen by the matching handwriting when compared to old high school notes and due to the fact that they found saline on the paper."

"Her tears," Gideon clarified. Hotchner nodded, grabbing his briefcase.

"We have until eight o' clock to get there and plan out what is going to happen. We need to get on the plane now," Hotchner said as everybody left, grabbed their go bags, and rushed to the plane. Once they hit altitude, Hotchner turned back to all of them.

"Everyone familiar with the father?" Hotchner asked as Spencer went on to basically divulge every necessary fact about the U.S. attorney's life and the affect it had on his twin daughters, which meant protection all their lives until they were 18. Derek, Elle, and Aubrey were assigned to go straight to the crime scene, which they did once the plane touched down. When they arrived, however, they found a peculiar sight: the victim's twin sister was lying in the dirt. When they questioned her FBI bodyguards nearby, they claimed she insisted she help with the investigation in this way.

"Twin telepathy?" Aubrey mused. Cheryl sat up quickly, looking around. She slowly stood up, walking over to where Elle, Derek, and Aubrey were standing.

"She was dragged. She fell, and she was dragged," Cheryl said, seeming almost in a daze. When she caught questioning looks from Elle and Derek, she was quick to say, "I know when there is something wrong with my sister. I don't feel her pain, but I do know something is wrong. Right now, I know how she was taken, and I know she's still alive."

Elle and Derek shared an unsure look, but Aubrey smiled and reached out toward Cheryl. "I'll bet anything you're right, sweetie. The statistics and general behavior of the UnSub support that. Do you want to come back with us to the house?"

"Is there anything else I can do here?" Cheryl asked eagerly. Aubrey smiled again as Derek went off to the forest to investigate.

"I don't think so, but you're welcome to watch us work if that would make you more comfortable. We're just doing a preliminary profile of the crime scene. Agent Morgan is going to try and figure out what the UnSub did when he got here," Aubrey said as they walked over to where Derek was talking to himself and Elle was watching.

"What is he doing?" Cheryl asked after a few moments.

"Roleplaying," Elle said.

"Because he's got nobody else to do it with," Aubrey said as a joke as Cheryl cracked a smile. They watched Derek pace in the forest, pointing finger guns and pretending like he was the UnSub in a million different situations. When he finally turned back to them, Aubrey was the one to ask, "Got anything?"

"The boyfriend was in the way. Killed him, grabbed the girl, dragged her off. Other than that, I got nothing," Derek said, sighing in defeat. Aubrey patted him on the shoulder, using her other hand to point behind her.

"We better head back to the house." She looked over at Cheryl and asked, "Is it okay with your bodyguards if we give you a lift?"

She looked over at them and they nodded their approval as Cheryl hopped in the backseat with Aubrey, divulging into the secrets of Patricia's life, including what drugs she had tried, at what age she had her first drink, and how many times on average she had snuck out of the house, all facts important to her victimology that they would find nowhere else but in the mind of someone who truly knew Patricia.

When they got back to the house, they saw that it had been fully set up with trackers and everything to handle the ransom call. When it came, however, their whole plan of training Mr. Davenport fell apart within five seconds as the caller and UnSub demanded, "I will only talk to Cheryl."

All eyes turned to the terrified twin, who shook her head adamantly. Elle was quick to paw the mute button as she turned to Cheryl and told her swiftly how to handle an UnSub like the one who obviously knew her. Within a minute, Cheryl was forced back onto the phone with the UnSub, making sure to humanize Patricia at every possible turn. When he hung up the phone, leaving the call untraceable and demanding his ransom in fifteen minutes, Cheryl ran out of the room with her dad hot on her heels as the team all turned to converse.

"This is sounding more and more like the UnSub already knows them," Aubrey said, taking a seat in one of the living room chairs. Derek took a seat on the arm next to her, and Hotchner stood across from the two of them, Gideon working out something with Reid. "The way he sounded almost relaxed when he was talking to Cheryl implies familiarity."

"What's more important to me, is that she isn't wearing a blindfold," Derek said pointedly. Hotchner ground his teeth as he met eyes with Derek. Gideon was the one who spoke Derek's unspoken thoughts.

"She's seen his face. When he gives her up, he'll kill her."

There was a moment of silence among them, as Hotchner left to answer a phone call. Derek, Gideon, and Spencer began talking off in the corner about what to do next, while Aubrey spotted Cheryl walk into the kitchen. She made eye contact with Elle, and together, the two woman converged down upon Cheryl, who was trying to down a glass of wine.

Elle carefully pulled the glass away from her lips as Cheryl sighed and said, "Can't you make an exception?"

"When he calls back, we need you at your best," Elle said to Cheryl, who sighed again, this one sounding more tired than annoyed. She put her head in her hands as she looked at Elle and Aubrey, asking them the same question almost every victim or victim's family did.

"How do you do this?"

Elle and Aubrey shared a look; although both of them were new to the job, they understood that having a good reason for this was important to the victim's families. Elle spoke first by saying, "I like taking down the weak men who do this. They prey on the most vulnerable people of society- women and children- and I think that's despicable. The fact that I put so many behind bars is what drives me."

Cheryl looked over at Aubrey just as Derek walked in to get their attention. He stayed at the doorway, realizing they were in the midst of a conversation, as Aubrey hesitated to think about her real reason. She met eyes with Cheryl and told her, "It's important to keep an anchor to the real fantasy world you normally live in, to a world full of optimism and oblivion. I choose to lose that anchor more often than most so other people can keep theirs. I protect not only the potential victims, but I protect their ignorance as well. No one should know how you feel right now, nor any person who is in your place. I'll protect that innocence until the day I die."

"Aubrey, Elle," Derek said gently, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but we're needed back in the main room. The second call should be coming in soon."

Aubrey and Elle followed Derek back into the main room, where the phone began ringing almost immediately. After giving explicit instructions that only Cheryl be involved in the transaction and she should not be followed, Hotchner decided to go against that rule and assign an unmarked car containing him and Derek to trail Cheryl. As they left, he was stopped by Aubrey.

"I'm going with you," Aubrey said, grabbing her gun off the table as she slipped it into her holster.

"Aubrey, we really only need two people on this," Hotchner said.

"Then keep Morgan here, sir. Cheryl is comfortable around me and Elle, not you and Derek. If something goes wrong, I want to be there to know that I did everything I could," Aubrey said adamantly. Hotchner eyed her for a few moments before nodding, leading both Derek and Aubrey out to the car. After tracking the GPS on Cheryl's car to a rental car parking lot, Hotchner parked the car and they waited, continuing their discussion they had going the whole ride there about inconsistencies in the phone call.

"What bothers me is his sudden exclusion of the police. If it was a simple money drop we knew was going to happen, why keep us out of it now? Why not keep us out of it in the first place? Additionally, his inquisition of Cheryl in personal questions, like her favorite color and if she likes chocolate, shows he's not focused on Patricia or the money," Aubrey said as Derek straightened.

"He's focused on Cheryl," Derek said slowly. It seemed to click in all of their minds at once.

"It's a second kidnapping," Hotchner said as they all jumped out of the car, Derek yelling at Cheryl to get down as a car sped away. Derek shot after it hopelessly while Aubrey rushed to Cheryl and escorted her quickly back into the car. When they got back to the house, Aubrey made sure to comfort Cheryl and Mr. Davenport while Reid did his own thing and the rest profiled in the kitchen.

The phone rang again, putting them all on high alert once more. After several times of hanging up on the UnSub and making him furious enough to yell at them, Mr. Davenport had to be held down by Hotchner and Derek as Cheryl clung to Aubrey for support. Finally, the UnSub slipped, as Gideon had intended for him to do so, by profiling the profilers.

"I know all of you. Ambitious Aaron Hotchner, who'd step on anyone to get to the directorship of the FBI. Arrogant Jason Gideon, who claims to be so intelligent but can't even diagnose the autistic leadings of insecure Dr. Reid. Precious Elle, who was promoted too soon and isn't a real threat to anyone. Golden girl Aubrey, with her multiple degrees and past filled with bad luck who road into the BAU on Gideon and her father's coattails. And token Derek Morgan, who is nothing but a side of beef to you all," the UnSub said as each member except Gideon and Hotchner either bristled or had the decency to look surprised. "I know what to do now, do you!?"

He hung up the phone, and Gideon let a self-sufficient smile slide onto his face. While Mr. Davenport ranted and raved about them not doing anything to save their daughter, the team shared a confident smile of their own. Mr. Davenport was escorted out of the room as they began their discussion again.

"For him to know that much about us, he's got to be one of us," Derek said. "We should probably start running a list of agents in the New Haven office, because he's probably familiar with this house and with this family, meaning Davenport has been in contact with him before."

"I'll get the order to Garcia," Hotchner said as he pulled out his phone. "Until then, we need to get Cheryl to a safehouse, and we need to keep it on the down low. We only tell a few agents, and keep her contact to a minimum until we figure out who the UnSub is. Aubrey, Elle, and Derek, I want you to go with Cheryl to the safehouse, along with Agent Shyer from the New Haven office."

Elle nodded as the three of them dressed up Cheryl in an FBI hat and jacket, sneaking her into one of the SUVs as they made their way to the safehouse. As Elle made a call to Spencer and Agent Shyer went out to check the perimeter, Aubrey went to check some of the extra rooms in the safehouse just for fun. She had never been in a safehouse before, and wanted to explore.

As she exited, she walked into the kitchen area and saw Derek, knocked out on the floor. She quickly unholstered her gun, rushing to Cheryl's room with Elle nowhere in sight. As she got closer to Cheryl's door, she heard a man's voice talking to her- Shyer. He professed his love for her, and Aubrey slowly wedged her way into the door, noticing he was holding a knife.

"Put the knife down, Shyer," Aubrey demanded. Shyer looked at Aubrey in surprise.

"You don't understand our love," Shyer said.

"I said, put the gun down!"

Shyer stared at Aubrey, then rushed at her as Cheryl chose now to scream. Aubrey quickly dropped her gun, using her fists and legs as she got rid of the knife and brought Shyer down to the ground, leaving his groin sore and his nose broken. She pulled out her gun again and pointed it at him as Elle rushed in, on the phone with Hotchner as she told him the news.

Moments later, police were escorting Shyer into a car while Derek awoke with his head in Aubrey's lap. He told them about how Shyer had jumped him with a taser, knocking him unconscious and rendering him useless and helpless.

After finding Patricia alive due to Elle's excellent interrogation skills with Shyer and rushing both twins off to the hospital, they all made the not-so-long trip back to Quantico, all of them wanting nothing more to sleep. Derek thought he was alone with the janitor for the night as he opened up the case file and began to work on it diligently.

"Heads up, Morgan," a voice came from the darkness. Derek turned and instinctively put his hands up, catching the bag of frozen peas in his hand just as Aubrey emerged from the shadows. He smiled at her and she said, "There's a whole stockpile of things in the fridge I didn't even know existed until now."

"Thanks," Derek said, grabbing an extra shirt from his go bag and wrapping the bag up as he placed it against his back. He winced and said, "For this, and for getting me up earlier. I'm just really lucky the guy didn't gut me while I was out."

"He didn't want you. Nobody wants you, with your rock hard six pack and bulging biceps." Derek laughed heartily, realizing Aubrey was slightly kidding as she smiled at him. "Are you really going to finish that file tonight?"

"500,000 volts to the back keeps your engine running at a speed previously thought to be impossible," Derek said, wiggling his eyebrows at Aubrey. "You want in?"

"As tempting as that is, I have a Tempur Pedic mattress that is calling my name. I have a duty to run to it as fast as I can," Aubrey said as Derek smiled and nodded. She looked over at him, smiling but still concerned, as she said, "If you need anything, please don't hesitate to call me."

"Goodnight, Aubrey," Derek said pointedly to her. She laughed and turned away, but Derek said, "By the way, you taking down Shyer must've been really badass."

Aubrey laughed again as she called behind her, "You know it was, baby. I'll see you tomorrow."

Derek grinned at her, saying genuinely, "Sounds good to me."

Then, the elevator doors closed behind her.


	6. The Protector

"Good morning, party people," Aubrey said as she came in, unloading her set of case files and her cup of coffee she had made back home. Derek grinned at her from his desk, and Elle waved at her while keeping her eyes on her computer screen. Gideon walked into the pit, making his way to the coffee machine as Aubrey asked anyone who was listening, "Have I missed anything this wonderful Wednesday morning?"

"Reid failed his qualification test," Elle announced to everyone who was listening.

"Yeah, well, he can re-test in two weeks. Until then, he has many more weapons that he can sideline an UnSub with," Gideon said, gathering his cup of coffee and paying only half of his full attention to the matter at hand like normal.

"It's not that. I just think that Reid might be a little sensitive about it, so we definitely should not point it out to him," Elle said pointedly as her eyes, along with Gideon's and Aubrey's, shifted toward a surprised and defensive Derek.

"Hey, I'll play nice," Derek said as the elevator doors opened and Spencer walked quickly to his desk, obviously upset. Aubrey watched him with concern as Derek got up from his desk, walking over to Spencer, who was unloading his own case files onto his desk. Derek put a hand on Spencer's desk and said, "Hey, man. We're here for you, okay?"

Spencer looked up at Derek in both annoyance and doubt as Derek pulled something out of his pocket, slipping it around Spencer's neck. When Aubrey got a good perspective on it, she heard the sharp trill of a whistle as Spencer rushed to get it off his neck and Derek laughed at his expense. Spencer pushed roughly past Derek, making his way to the meeting room.

When Derek turned, Aubrey glared at him. "You're a jackass, you know that, right?"

"At least I'm a hot jackass," Derek said as he made his way over to Aubrey's desk. She held her stare as he sat on her desk, dangerously close to her. "Come on, baby girl. You know you want me."

"You're delusional," Aubrey said as she grabbed the case file that had been left on her desk for the job today. "Now, will you mind trying to keep it in your pants for a little bit so we can get through this meeting without incident?"

"Whatever you ask of me, sweetness," Derek said as he grabbed his own case file, siding up next to Aubrey as they walked to the meeting room together.

"Well, in that case then, can you please apologize to Spencer? I realize you're trying to make a joke out of it because that's what jackasses do, but none of this is humorous to him. He's really embarrassed, and you made it only worse for him," Aubrey said. Derek looked over at her and sighed.

"I'll see if I can talk to him," Derek said as Aubrey patted him on the shoulder.

"Good, we're making progress," Aubrey said as they walked into the meeting room, taking their seats as Hotcher filled them in on their newest case. A sniper was shooting people in their stomachs, in an alarming amount of victims. The most recent attack was three people within a few minutes at the same park. Nobody had heard or seen anything until after the attacks, and then, nothing they had seen was potentially helpful.

"He's an L.D.S.K- a long distance serial killer. We don't have a successful case with one of those, right?" Aubrey asked casually enough. Hotchner looked over at her, and she raised her hands. "Sorry if that's a sensitive subject. I'm just saying, how do we profile this guy?"

"Like we do any other serial killer, with a few adjustments," Gideon said.

"Well, the first victim was obviously a test. Maybe he liked the thrill of the shot, but not the thrill of the kill, so he stopped. Or maybe his intention was never to kill, and he messed up," Derek proposed.

"The problem is, none of the victims are clearly connected. He obviously likes the challenge of a public place, but how does he choose those specific people?" Elle asked.

"Additionally, his bullets fragmented upon impact. Ballistics can't really help at this point. That being said, there is one victim who has a slug in his vertebrae, and who is currently being fought over at the hospital to decide wether or not he should have surgery to remove it, which could potentially paralyze him. I don't think our UnSub intended for that," Hotchner said, looking at his watch. "We better get going. Grab your go bags and get to the plane."

After a few hours in the sky, they landed in Des Plaines, Illinois. Almost immediately, they separated to two different places to set up: one being the police station, the second being the hospital where all the victims were treated. In most LDSK cases, the UnSub would either keep contact with the press, which would be monitored by the police, or the victims, which would be monitored by the hospital.

Elle, Aubrey, JJ, and Gideon took the hospital to deal with victimology at first, but the conversation, as it always did, diverted toward discussion of the UnSub. After meeting with a narcissistic surgeon and his chief that he consistently butted heads with, it was decided that the victim with a slug in his vertebrate would have surgery performed on him. While they awaited the results, the conversation diverted back to potential characteristics, moves, and motives of the UnSub.

"Well, there's an overlap time between police shifts, isn't there?" Aubrey asked Gideon. He nodded, and JJ and Elle looked toward her quizzically. Aubrey explained, "The time spot that the UnSub utilizes is the same twenty minute window where police shifts intertwine. While the early shift are at the station finishing files and the late shift are getting ready for their shifts- getting assignments, getting dressed, whatever- that's when he strikes."

The door opened, making JJ jump a little bit as the surgeon threw the slug onto the table. He commented without emotion, "I hope this helps you."

"How is the patient?" Gideon asked. The surgeon nearly snarled at the question.

"He will make a full recovery, as I told you he would," the surgeon commented, eyeing JJ, Elle, and Aubrey before he left, closing the door behind him. Aubrey made a disgusted face as JJ and Elle laughed, relieving their discomfort after getting eyed by the surgeon.

"That guy is grade A creepy," Aubrey said as she picked up the plastic baggie by the top with only two of her fingers. "I'll see if I can send the specs to Garcia."

After getting an ID on the bullet that was used, the team headed back to the park to reenact the shooting from earlier to see if any victim had a good vantage point of the UnSub and just didn't realize it. As Aubrey and Derek were casually talking from where they were pretending to be the father who was shot and his son who was with him, JJ rushed over.

"We've got a problem," JJ said as she walked over to Derek and Aubrey to explain. "Someone released the profile to the media. We think the shooter's here, as one of the cops. We want you guys to remain calm, but we know that if you see us walking around, you'll get suspicious."

"What if the UnSub shoots?" Derek asked. JJ bit her lip.

"I didn't say it was a foolproof plan," JJ said as Gideon called her back over to him. Derek sighed and turned back to Aubrey, rotating the camera around and keeping his movements consistent with those he had been executing in the last thirty minutes or so.

"Do we get an award or something if we get this L.D.S.K.?" Aubrey asked. Derek laughed, and she smiled, hitting him in the arm. "I'm serious. I'm still relatively new to this, so is there like certain awards for achievements, like a level up in a video game?"

"Did you just compare our job to something like a Mario game?" Derek asked as Aubrey laughed.

"They're not so different. He's off to save the damsel, we're off to save the victims. We both run in teams, there's a villain involved, and the only major difference is that we don't have any mushrooms that help us move on," Aubrey said as Derek smiled, nodding his head.

"I suppose that's true," he commented as he looked over at the sniper car and saw the SWAT team circling around it. Gideon rushed back over to Aubrey and Derek just as Derek asked, "What the hell is happening?"

"We think the guy acting as the UnSub is the actual UnSub. SWAT's gonna get him out and we'll go back to the station after that. Keep your position for now. I need to go tell Elle what's going on," Gideon said as he moved onto Elle. Aubrey looked over at Derek in doubt, and he looked back at her in confusion.

"What?" He asked her.

"I don't know, something just doesn't feel right about this," Aubrey said, turning back to look at where they were smoking the guy out, keeping their weapons trained on the trunk of the car. "While a police officer contacting the media makes sense at first, we have to think about this way. We profiled the guy as extremely organized. Why would he make a call that was so easy to track?"

They looked over at the car as the police officer stepped out, guided by SWAT team members.

Suddenly, a shot rang out.

"Aubrey, get down!" Derek shouted as he tackled her. She gave a surprised gasp as Derek softened her fall by placing his arms behind her back. She still hissed in pain as his watch dug into her shoulder, grabbing his bicep out of reflex. Derek quickly looked at her and asked, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Aubrey said, looking up at Derek to meet his eyes. They locked as Hotchner's voice squawked over their earpieces, telling them to get back to the car so they could brainstorm again. Derek got off Aubrey and helped her up as they walked back to the car in awkward, tension-filled silence, noting that the police officer they had thought to be the UnSub had been shot dead. As they drove back to the station with Hotchner and Detective Calvin, they tried to think of new approaches, a process that continued when the team all regathered in the station.

"Well, since he hasn't contacted the media, he's gone the other way. He's contacting his victims," Gideon said. The whole team straightened their backs as Detective Calvin watched them curiously.

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"It means that he works at one of the hospitals," Hotchner said, grabbing the keys to the car again as they made their way back out. Aubrey jumped into the car with Gideon, Spencer, and Detective Calvin as they drove to the hospital, deciding the surgeon was probably their best bet. As Gideon interrogated him, gaining an alibi, Hotchner grabbed Spencer and Aubrey and took them with him to the ER to corroborate with the doctor the surgeon had claimed to be with. On the way there, Aubrey cleared her throat to speak her mind.

"If we profile this guy like we did the Angel of Death, taking into account that he's hurting three people at a time but not actually getting the chance to operate on all of them, wouldn't we be looking for someone who could maximize every opportunity to take care of them? He can only operate on one person at a time, and he hasn't operated on all of the victims. I don't think he's on our UnSub," Aubrey said. Hotchner nodded.

"I agree. And who would probably be the first person to work on a trauma patient but someone who works in the ER?" Hotchner asked as they made their way into the ER. "I will check the alibi. Reid and Aubrey, you start asking around for anyone who fits the profile."

Aubrey did as Hotchner demanded, questioning people as he walked over to her to help her. He elaborated on the profile- a narcissistic man who blamed his faults on others and usually acted rude when someone tried to help him- and the nurse clicked almost immediately.

"Philip Dowd. He's a nurse here, he picks up extra shifts at Arlington," the nurse said. Hotchner looked over at Aubrey, who nodded and went to go walk away to tell Gideon as she wasn't allowed to use her cell phone in the ER. A man nurse rounded the corner and reached into his jacket, pulling out an automatic weapon as Aubrey went for her gun. He shot out the electricity, and brought Aubrey down with a simple hit to the face with his gun. She heard her nose crack as blood gushed out, and the screams of the ER made her pulse race even faster.

"Get up," Philip Dowd growled, pointing the barrel of the gun to the back of Aubrey's head. She raised her hands as he walked her back to where Hotchner and Spencer were clearing a space for them to have a standoff, making sure the victims were out of any possible line of fire. Philip forced something into Aubrey's hands and said, "Put these on them."

Aubrey recognized them as zip ties as she placed them around the wrists of her boss and co-worker. Dowd then instructed Spencer to tighten the zip tie around Aubrey's wrists as he sent her to the floor again, trying to bargain with Hotchner, who claimed Spencer had been a pain in his ass for years. Aubrey was sure she was having a concussion as she listened to usually calm and composed Hotchner lose it.

Then, she realized what he was doing: he was gaining the UnSub's trust.

After giving tips to Dowd about how to better improve his body count and asking for permission to beat Spencer, even Aubrey, half-unconscious, could tell that Hotchner was on this guy's good side. That didn't mean Aubrey was any less surprised as Hotchner began kicking Spencer in the stomach.

"Oh, my God, Hotch, what are you doing?!" Aubrey shouted, acting as she watched Hotchner lay into Spencer. She screamed, "Hotch, stop!"

"Shut up!" Phillip Dowd shouted as he hit Aubrey in the head with the butt of his gun. Hotchner flinched as Aubrey cried out in genuine pain, acting it up a little bit as she felt her head split open. She watched from the floor as Spencer managed to wedge the gun out of Hotchner's ankle holster, and Hotchner finished his beating, Dowd looking enthused for a few moments before he looked down and saw Hotchner's empty ankle holster.

"Wait a..."

There was another shot as the hostages screamed, and Aubrey watched as Dowd fell over, bleeding from the head. Hotchner rushed over to let the SWAT team and police officers in, and Aubrey looked over at Spencer in surprise.

"I thought you said you failed your test?" Aubrey asked in surprise.

"I did," Spencer said, shaking his head. "I was aiming for his leg."

Aubrey laughed in spite of her pain as the EMTs rushed in and helped her up. She was sitting on the back of the ambulance, waiting for the EMTs to help her out as they were checking stability on all the ER patients that had been forced to go on generators when the electricity cut out. Derek walked over to her, pushing a piece of clothe to where she was still bleeding from her head.

"Are you okay?" Derek asked in full concern for her well being.

"I'm fine, Derek," Aubrey said, sliding her hand underneath his to take control of the rag on her face. "I can take care of myself, I'm a big girl."

"Are you sure? They said they're going to have to give you stitches and re-set your nose," Derek said. Aubrey winched, tucking her legs underneath her as she sat crisscross applesauce. Derek inwardly smiled at her informality.

"You're just trying to scare me so I want to hold your hand, aren't you?" Aubrey asked with a small smirk. Derek rose both of his eyebrows.

"Do you want to?"

Aubrey looked at Derek in surprise, hearing the seriousness in his voice. He slipped his hand under Aubrey's as she sighed and held onto it, shaking her head and smiling. "You're such a typical guy until things get serious."

"Which would make me not a typical guy," Derek said pointedly. Aubrey laughed as the EMT walked over to her, giving her a shot of local anesthesia as they began stitching up the cut across her head. When that was done, Aubrey took Derek's hand again as they reset her nose, the real pain coursing through her body as she nearly convulsed and clung to Derek's hand. Once they were done and cleaned her up, she looked over at Derek with a smile on her face.

"Thank you," she said as he helped her up from the ambulance's edge. Derek smiled back at her and went to go say something, but was interrupted by Spencer calling him over to where he was sitting on an ambulance edge getting treated.

He looked back over at Aubrey at the same moment Elle came up, saying, "Don't worry, Morgan. I'll take care of your girl until you get back."

Aubrey laughed and Derek smiled again, walking over to Spencer as Elle turned to Aubrey, who looked at Elle and asked her honestly, "What exactly is the Bureau's rules on inter office relationships again?"

Elle laughed and said, "Nothing serious, actually. I know tons of people who have dated within the Bureau before, and in clear violation of that rule. It's mostly so they can have something to back up on in case there is a domestic dispute within the Bureau."

Aubrey smiled as she looked over at Derek, who was getting his whistle back from Spencer. She looked back over at Elle and said, "That's good."

"Why? Thinking about giving old Derek Morgan a run?" Elle asked. Aubrey shrugged, smiling again.

"We'll see."


	7. The First Time

It was one of those days where Aubrey really didn't want to come in.

Her head was pounding, her body screaming in protest as she rose from the bed. Her body ached from a late night out with some girl friends at the club and an intense workout the day before as well after work. She massaged her calves, her thighs, and her upper arms as she waited for her shower to warm up. After she was ready and got to work, she was rewarded for her effort with a small baby.

She smiled up at Hotchner, who was holding the baby carefully and had the new-father glow about him. She joined in on the cooing and the poking and the babytalk as Derek walked up and Penelope asked him, "Can't you wait until you have one of these?"

"I'm good with practicing for now," Derek said, making direct eye contact with Aubrey as he winked at her. She smirked and fought the urge to give him the bird as she turned back to Jack.

"Even your conceited attitude can't ruin this, Morgan," Aubrey commented, putting out her finger as Jack grabbed it. After a few more minutes of playing with the baby, Haley, Hotchner's wife, took him away as Hotchner grabbed today's file from Elle.

"What do we got?" He asked any one of the women- Elle, JJ, Aubrey, or Penelope- around him. Elle was the one to take the bait.

"Murder-suicide, presumably. Gideon think it's more," Elle said as they got to the meeting room.

"We have reason to believe it isn't a murder-suicide," JJ addressed the whole room. "A month ago, another family was found the same way. Bags packed for a vacation they never took, found in their basement, children and mother slaughtered and father with a bullet through his head- another thought-to-be murder-suicide. We know now that's not the truth."

"The fact that he takes them to the basement means some level of organization. The fact that he keeps them for so long before taking them to basement means control," Gideon said.

"The original suspect right now is this man," JJ said, sliding a mugshot of a black man into the center of the table. "He is the biological father of the children of the first family, and he was divorced from after his ex-wife got a restraining order on him due to domestic violence."

"When did she re-marry?" Derek asked.

"The week before they were killed," JJ answered honestly, wincing. "The cops found him after a drunken disturbance call, hiding out in a motel. There was blood on his jacket- his children's."

"Any DNA on the Crawfords?" Aubrey asked, shuffling through the file. JJ shook her head.

"Arlington PD wants us to interview Miller," JJ said. Gideon nodded toward Spencer, who looked surprised, but when he went to go argue, he fell under Gideon's stare. JJ stood up from her spot and said, "We better get going."

They picked up all their things and headed to the plane, getting to Arlington relatively painlessly. The minute they got off the plane, Gideon grabbed Aubrey by the arm and separated her form the others. She looked over curiously at him and he said, "I want you to go monitor Reid's inquisition. Don't interrupt, but I want you to report to me on how he does."

Aubrey nodded, joining back up beside JJ and Derek and continuing their conversation about football, while Gideon, Hotchner, Elle, and Reid talked about the UnSub. They split into two different cars, heading to different destinations: Gideon, Elle, and Derek to the new crime scene; Hotchner, and Spencer, JJ, and Aubrey to the station. Almost immediately, Aubrey and Spencer were directed toward the interrogation room.

As Spencer came to the door that separated him and the possible UnSub, he threw a nervous look over his shoulder at Hotchner and Aubrey. She gave him what she hoped was a warm smile, squeezing his shoulder as she promised him, "You can do this."

Spencer took in a deep breath and crossed into the interrogation room, garnering the attention of the fearsome, hulking figure handcuffed to the table. He introduced himself feebly, and after getting an abrupt and demanding response from the UnSub, he became more uncomfortable. The criminal became extremely confrontational, now yelling at Spencer as Aubrey and Hotchner rushed in.

However, Spencer quickly broke him down emotionally by profiling his past: an alcoholic mother, an abusive father. The hulking mass of a man turned to a whimpering, broken hearted father, and Hotcher and Aubrey left the room to let Spencer do this thing.

"He didn't do it, you know," Aubrey said. Hotchner nodded.

"He's still wearing his wedding ring. He loved his wife, and he claims he never laid a hand on the kids, whereas he was very open of beating his wife," Hotchner said, shaking his head. "He's definitely not our man."

Spencer emerged a few moments later with the same conclusion. When they walked out, they saw that Derek and Gideon had returned from their journey to the crime scene. After perusing ideas of how he kept the family bound due to no ligature marks and how he got into the house by not triggering the alarm or using forced entry, as well as how he kept them in control for four days in the house, they began to think about people who would know that the families were about to go on vacation and, therefore, would not be missed by the people in their community. Hotchner called from where he had joined Penelope in her Tech Cave to reveal that the Crawfords were spending way more than they had financially, most notably on a therapist and on a second cell phone for the wife that lead to a second address.

The whole team except Penelope and JJ poured out at the second address, moving from room to room and clearing each until Derek and Gideon came to a room where they could see a shadow within moving quickly. Derek knocked down the door with his power kick, but was immediately brought back down when he saw the huge Rottweiler within, drooling and ready to tear him to pieces.

A man at the end of the hallway whistled for him, controlling him, and as they brought him back to the station, they learned that he was the mentally unstable brother of Mrs. Crawford, and he saw the man who killed his sister and her family. After he essentially had a breakdown in the interrogation room after learning he could've done something more to save his sister and her family, they finally decided he was not the culprit and that the killer has moved onto someone else.

After a night of sleep to develop fresh eyes, they began again with searching for a connection. Aubrey and Derek split up lists of doctors, teachers, home services, anything that they could possibly have come into contact with the same person, but to no avail. Derek gets up from his desk, getting into his mode of stepping into another world full of just profiling.

"We know organized killers have a stable job, if not an impressive one, and are of above average intelligence. He appears normal in his occupational world because he knows how to keep up a front. He's socially confident, and sexually confident. He takes more pleasure from teasing than from the actual end game," Derek said.

"I'm pretty sure you just profiled yourself, perhaps excluding the fact where you killed two families," Aubrey said. Derek smirked at her.

"I like the end game much better than the teasing, sweetness," Derek flirted. Aubrey smirked at him in return as Hotchner cleared his throat, bringing them back out of their own world.

"They do exhaustive amounts of research, and they write down every detail of their schedules. This is how he maintains control, and personalizes the target, and nothing is left to chance or put out of place," Derek said.

"So are we looking at someone who's OCD?" Elle asked. Derek shook his head.

"Not necessarily, but I definitely wouldn't rule it out," Derek said as Gideon came up, looking excited.

"I found these two pictures, both painted by Emily, but painted months apart," Gideon said, holding up the two. "This one is lively, colorful, simple. The other is black and white, many lines, many dimensions. I think the black and white one is from the UnSub's point of view, and I think Emily was coerced to paint it."

"Additionally, all the male victims are missing their wedding rings," Hotchner said, taking off his own and inspecting it as if it held the clue. "He probably lost his own family, and therefore, is trying to act like a father for a few days."

"A few days when he knows they're gone due to them supposedly being on vacation," Elle added.

"Wait a second," Aubrey said, looking up from her files quickly. Eyes swiveled toward her as she said, "Chris worked for the IRS. Reese worked for the JAO. They're both government employees."

"Let's go to their work places, see what we can get there. Spencer, I want you to stay here with Penelope in case we need any fast-working magic," Hotchner said, nodding toward the door. They walked down to the garages, Gideon, Aubrey, and Derek getting into one car as Elle and Hotchner got into the other. The first car headed to Chris' work place while the second went to Reese's. When they got there, they figured both went to family therapists and that they commonly used children's paintings to assess families.

Spencer and Penelope figure out that both families went to see a therapist at the same health center, and Gideon, Hotchner, Aubrey, and Derek go to the health center to question the main doctor there, who claims she only met each family once and passed their cases onto someone else, another man named Karl Arnold. After no answer on his cell and no presence in his home, they called his ex wife only to find that he had called her with kids in the background, meaning he was at another house.

"We've got to go through the case files he's worked to see if anything jumps out at us," Aubrey suggested, getting clearance from Hotchner with a simple nod of his head. She took out two bobby pins from her hair, letting it fall past her shoulders as she jimmied the lock on his file cabinets successfully. Derek whistled.

"Neat trick, Bentley," Derek said appreciatively.

"Don't compliment me just yet," Aubrey said, handing a huge pile of case files up to him. He sighed and moved to the couch on the side of the room, beginning to pore through the files as Aubrey split them up between each of the people within the room. After an hour or so of combing through the files, they put down each family that had a wife, husband, a son, and a daughter- the same family Karl left. As they went through the names, the doctor Karl worked for froze.

"The Duncans... that's not his case, that's mine. They shouldn't be here, though. They should be out of town already, they were going on a vacation," the doctor said. Aubrey quickly dropped her files as she met eyes with Gideon, running out the door with him and Derek as Hotchner stayed behind to call for back-up. They sped all the way to the house, meeting up with SWAT as they broke into the house, saving the father, mother, and daughter.

"He's got my baby!" The mother was hysterical. "Please, he's got my baby!"

"Where's the basement, ma'am?" Aubrey asked quickly.

"Underneath the stairs," the mother said as Aubrey nodded at Derek and they ran with Gideon to the door of the basement, walking in slowly, stealthily. Derek took the lead while Gideon made sure Aubrey was between them, as he knew Karl had obvious resentment for women. They finally found him, hiding in between boxes and tools of the basement.

"Karl, I'm going to put the gun away. I just want the baby, and then you can go," Gideon said softly. The baby began crying, making the situation only ten times more tense.

"Hand me the baby, Karl," Gideon said as he stepped forward slowly, his hands out to receive. Karl sunk back into the shadows, and Gideon's lip lifted into a slight snarl only Aubrey could catch. She put a hand on his shoulder, slipping her gun into her holster. Derek grabbed her by the arm to stop her, but she threw his hand off as she stepped in front of Gideon.

"Hey, Karl, baby," she said in a sweetening tone that surprised Derek, "I need to take the baby to the doctor. Can you please bring him to me? We have to make sure that cough isn't something worse."

Karl stepped into the light again, attracted to Aubrey playing house. Aubrey gave him a warm smile and relaxed into her posture, laughing. "Why are you over there, silly? Hand me your son so I can take him to the doctor. You don't want him to be sick, do you?"

"No," Karl said slowly, handing the baby to Aubrey. She let out a big breath of air as Karl suddenly turned malicious and said, "I don't want you taking him anywhere, though."

Karl's arm lifted as the knife glinted in the small amount of light coming from the top of the stairs. Aubrey turned to shield the baby, but the knife never met her skin as she heard someone, somewhere, yell out the warning of the weapon. She quickly scampered halfway up the stairs as she heard a scuffle, then the wall shook as she heard Derek grunt.

"You move, I break your neck," he threatened. He nodded to Aubrey to tell her to leave, and she raced out while Gideon stayed to help Derek out with Karl. Aubrey ran out to the mother and handed her the baby, while the sister hugged her legs tightly and thanked her. Aubrey welcomed the family and looked over just in time to see Derek sit on the edge of an ambulance trunk, holding a shirt to his arm that was soaked with blood and wincing.

"What the hell, Derek?"

"Karl nicked me," Derek said as he hissed in pain. Aubrey jumped into the back of the ambulance shuffling around. Derek tried to look behind him as he asked, "Aubrey, what are you doing?"

"I'm going to get you stitched up," Aubrey said, coming back with some tools as she put out a gloved hand for his arm. Derek looked up at her warily, and her eyes danced. "I already got clearance from the EMTs, chill out. I did graduate from med school, you know. I'm just not a practicing physician. Stitches are like, day one of med school."

She looked up at him, meeting his eyes and rendering Derek helpless as she asked, "Trust me?"

In the middle of the sirens, the police officers yelling commands, and the sound of children crying somewhere, Derek honed in on Aubrey and nodded as she went to work on his arm, cleaning it up as it stung. Within fifteen minutes, she was applying an antiseptic on top of his new battle scar.

"It looks totally badass, if its any consolation. Say you got in a bar fight with a huge, drunk Irish man. Always impressive," Aubrey said as Derek laughed.

"Would it impress you?" Derek asked.

"Nice try, Derek, but unfortunately for you, I was actually here," Aubrey said, wrapping his arm in gauze. "On second thought, go with the original story- you got slashed by a serial killer while protecting a baby. I'm pretty sure that will when over several hearts of women. Keep the Irish story for men."

"I'm not interested in impressing men," Derek said.

"I'm not saying your gay, because trust me, I know you're not, but guys always try to impress guys because they're competitive like that," Aubrey said as she sealed the gauze. "There, you're good to go."

"Thanks, Aubrey," Derek said, getting up off the trunk. She smiled at him.

"It was no problem," she said as Hotchner came over and said it was about time for them to leave now that Derek was all sewn up and they had discussed case reports with the locals. It was a simple drive back to the FBI office, but when they got back, Derek had been told to change his gauze to a more industrial one by an EMT before they had left the scene.

Derek pulled out one of his desk drawers after everybody had left, undoing his gauze to see the wound he had gotten. He winced and began trying to wrap the gauze around his own arm, but to no avail. He was about to give up when he heard footsteps, and looked up to see Aubrey was carrying her case file and her bag. He gave her a curious look, and she said, "Adrenaline's still pumping a little bit, so I figured I'd come back and get some work done."

"Can you help me with this?" Derek asked, pulling his gauze on his arm and trying to hold it together at the same time. Aubrey laughed as she motioned to her desk, Derek taking a seat. He put his arm out while she bandaged it, being careful as he winced.

"I can't believe you didn't even notice you got stabbed," Aubrey said.

"I had an adrenaline rush and knew it was only secondary to the kid's safety," Derek said. Aubrey smiled up at him for a moment, looking back down at his arm as she continued to wrap it. Derek smiled himself as he asked cynically, "What was that for?"

"For the fact that you totally care if you have kids or not, and that you do want more than just 'practicing'," Aubrey said, pulling away for a few seconds to even put air quotations around the word. She finished off the wrap and smiled up at Derek, but this was a more curious smile with far more depth than Aubrey had ever shown to Derek. "There's something about you, Derek Morgan. I'll figure it out."

"Am I a challenge to you now?" Derek asked teasingly. Aubrey laughed.

"Don't flatter yourself, Derek. Every good profiler needs time to get it right, and I'll get you right down to your great grandmother's maiden name."

"Really? Because I could analyze you right now," Derek said. Aubrey snorted and raised her eyebrows.

"Okay, try me, hot shot," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. Derek's eyes flitted shamelessly down to her cleavage, then back up to her eyes. He spoke smoothly and fluidly.

"Your mother was killed when you were young, and your father was missing in action because he was actually a covert FBI officer too attached to his job and he had to pull away for a mission. You were adopted at age five by a pair of parents you fit in with, and you had two older brothers and a younger sister, all adopted except your biological older brother, who is the older of the two. You're closest to him not only due to actual blood similarities, but because of your similar love in crime and comedy movies as well as sports teams, your favorite of which vary between your home state Cowboys and the Colts. You went to Johns Hopkins for med school and graduated early as a prodigy child and girl genius. During your college years, you re-connected with your father, only to lose him in a horrible bombing hostage situation that inspired you to join the FBI he was so loyal to," Derek said. Aubrey nodded and smiled.

"Pretty impressive. But tell me something you couldn't get off an eHarmony account," Aubrey challenged.

Derek smirked at her, recognizing how close he had gotten to Aubrey in the fervor of their profiling. She was standing between his slightly open legs, one hand on one of his thighs. He slipped his hands into the curves of her waist as she retained her cool and he told her, "You want to kiss me."

"Do I?" Aubrey asked, acting confused as she gave Derek a challenging, slow smile.

"I know I want you to," Derek murmured as he leant forward and pulled Aubrey closer to him simultaneously. He pressed his lips to hers and slid off the desk so he could turn her around and slide her up onto the desk, lying her down.

"You know that the cameras still run at night?" Aubrey asked in a whisper.

"Well, some tech is going to have a surprise in the morning," Derek whispered back to her, leaning down to suck on her collarbone. She placed her hand on the back of his head and tipped back her own.

And that's how Aubrey spent her first full night in the FBI building.


	8. The Decision

After Aubrey and Derek broke into the waiting room and fell asleep on the couch together, Aubrey woke up some time in the middle of the night to the sound of the custodians cleaning up. She gently pulled out of Derek's arms as he groaned and moved, but didn't wake. She felt her heart swell as she looked at him, but falter at the idea that there were rules in the FBI that were created to keep something like this from happening.

She first broke into Penelope's lair, erasing all the security tapes and covering it with a looping still image. When she came to the waiting room camera, she looked and saw the couch was empty.

"What are you doing?" A deep voice came from behind her. She screamed as the door closed behind her, turning to face Derek, who looked just as surprised as she did. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Aubrey said as she turned back to the screens, "just getting rid of the evidence."

"Don't tell me you're super tech savvy, too? I can't handle a Reid-Garcia hybrid," Derek said as he sat on the edge of the table, leaning over to kiss Aubrey. She pulled away and he looked at her in confusion, asking, "Did I imagine that, or did we or didn't we just have sex on the couch in the waiting room?"

"We did," Aubrey said slowly, "but it was wrong."

"Wrong?" Derek asked, laughing as Aubrey finished up her own project. "Wrong, how?"

"Wrong because it goes against the FBI rules, wrong," Aubrey said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. She sighed, putting her head in her hands. "Der, I'm really, really sorry. I just... you put your life on the line for me, and that was really attractive, and I really wish we didn't work together, because I know this would work out."

"Let's make it work out," Derek said, pulling Aubrey's hands away from her face as he held them between his own. She gave him a dubious look and he promised her, "We'll make it work."

"I'm sorry, Derek. I can't risk my job for this, not right now," Aubrey said as she leapt up from the chair, grabbing her bag as she ran out. Derek cussed, kicking Penelope's desk and knowing she would know it in the morning.

But at that point in time, he didn't care.

When Derek came in the next morning, with no additional sleep but with a new outfit and a shower, he tried so hard to get Aubrey's attention, but was sidelined by Penelope who, sure enough, knew that he had been in her room. He tried to feed her excuses that she didn't accept, but was saved by JJ, who needed to present a case but also had a conflicting meeting. She siphoned the case off to Derek, who told everybody to meet up with him in Baltimore as he drove ahead of everybody else to clear his head.

When they all met up again two hours later in Baltimore, Elle had a steaming hot coffee for Derek and a welcoming smile. He tried to copy the smile as he looked over toward Aubrey but, once again, he was ignored. He sighed and stopped his attempts, moving on to the job at hand.

"This came through the Baltimore PD. Two victims, husband and wife, no kids, no previous records. Witness said when she came up to the door, a white man in his early to late 20s ran out, and she said that he was, and I quote 'hoppin' up on dem damn drugs'," Derek said, looking toward Aubrey for her usual smirk. She ignored him at all costs, leading the team up the stairs.

"Seems like a typical double homicide. What makes it our thing?" Hotchner asked. They found out soon enough as they saw Aubrey, frozen in her tracks as she took in the scene with surprise. As they all filtered in around her, they saw why.

"Massive overkill," Derek said, grimacing as they took in the gory, bloody scene. "Wife had ligature marks on her wrists, and a clean cut across the neck."

"Blood looks arterial," Aubrey cut in, buzzing back in as she looked up at the ceiling, studying the blood spatter. "It was quick."

"Husband wasn't as lucky," Derek said, ready to use anything to start a conversation with Aubrey again. He looked over at her, but she kept looking up at the ceiling. He sighed inwardly and continued by saying, "Ligature wounds on wrists and ankles, torture marks like burns, and a clear cut up through the abdomen, slicing through two layers of muscle."

"That takes a lot of power," Elle pointed out.

"We have three victims here," Gideon said, pointing to the tub, which was ringed with blood although the rest was empty. "If this bath was filled with blood, the person lost all of it."

"Meaning they're probably dismembered, and the UnSub's still got the parts," Spencer finished as they all shared a concerned look. Hotchner breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, the way Aubrey noticed he had started doing before almost all cases.

"Well, there's no sexual component on these two victims, but there may be on the third. The fact that he took that body, even though he probably dismembered it, means that he probably doesn't want it to be identified either, meaning it has a connection to him. Morgan, I want you to call Garcia and ask her to see if there was any possible person the victims would've harbored. Maybe they were here at the wrong time. Secondly, ask her for any prior crimes committed in Maryland that would fit our profile," Hotchner said as Derek nodded and walked off to phone Penelope. He had to brush past Aubrey, looking at her intensely, but she looked directly away, an exchange that didn't go missed by Hotchner.

They all left the crime scene and returned back to Quantico to regroup. Hotchner and Aubrey were in charge of coffee while the rest met in the meeting room and kept spitballing profiles. Hotchner was just about to talk to Aubrey about the obvious tension between her and Derek before JJ popped up and said, "Hotch, there are some agents here from the organized crime unit that think you're getting in on their turf. I'll go grab Gideon, too."

"Organized crime?" Aubrey asked, looking over toward the group of agents. She grinned at the leader, walking over as she shook his hand, saying, "Agent Cramer."

"You two know each other?" Hotchner asked as Gideon walked out of the meeting room.

"Yeah, I did my homework despite my bias toward the BAU. I tried out a little bit of everything, and my dad's connections got me some high tutors. Cramer was one of them," Aubrey said, still smiling. "He got me into kickboxing."

"Just wanted you to stay protected," Agent Cramer said with a smile as he put his hand out to Hotchner, then Gideon. "Agent Hotchner, Agent Gideon, it's nice to meet you both. The BAU is kind of famous."

"What can we help you with?" Gideon asked, no nonsense like usual.

"We appreciate you stepping in at Baltimore, but this is obviously an organized crime case for now. If you don't mind us taking over, we'd appreciate it," Agent Cramer said the nicest way he probably could, but still, he ended up sounding rude. Aubrey felt her eyebrows furrow and went to protest, but Hotchner shook his head and touched her gently on the arm as Gideon smiled at Cramer, playing nice fire with nicer fire.

"Of course. If you need us, let us know. You know where we live," Gideon said as they all shook hands again. Hotchner and Aubrey grabbed the coffee from where they had set it down, then followed Gideon back into the meeting room as the organized crime unit agents headed the other way. Elle, Spencer, JJ, and Derek all looked up, obviously aware of Cramer's issues, as Gideon promised them, "We're still on the case."

"But Cramer wanted us off," Aubrey said in surprise.

"Doesn't mean we can't just sneak behind him. Welcome to the BAU, where we do half the things they tell us not to do," Gideon said as he began writing more characteristics on the board of their UnSub. Hotchner looked up quickly and managed to catch Derek look over just as quickly at Aubrey, who looked back down at the file quickly as she drank her coffee, ignoring Derek's stare. He gave up after a few moments, but Hotchner kept his observation on them for a few moments more.

"Well, we have the third victim," Derek said, throwing his file on the table just inches from Aubrey. She flinched, but didn't look up, and everybody but Spencer suddenly caught onto their tension. "He's a low level mob guy, nephew of the two other vics. They found and accounted for all his body parts, found in 7 different trash cans in 2 locations in Baltimore. He worked at a car shop for an upper level supposed mob guy."

"I'll go with you to talk to the boss," Hotchner said. When he saw Elle was about to volunteer, he quickly but coolly added, "The rest of you, stay here and work the profile."

Elle sat back down in her seat, looking defeated as Derek and Hotchner drove to the third victims' work place, a scrap metal yard back in Maryland. Hotchner kept the conversation light, but kept hinting back to Aubrey and the new members of the team, hoping he'd elicit a response out of Derek. When they arrived at the yard, he had given up entirely, but Derek finally caught on.

"Hotch, I want to start an inter-bureau relationship with a girl," Derek said suddenly, and steadily. Hotchner looked over at him, meeting his eyes in his typical stoic way.

"With Aubrey? Because I think you already have," Hotchner said slowly. Derek stared at his boss in surprise, and the corners of his mouth twitched as he said, "The custodians told me they thought they saw you two. I didn't think it was true, but it made sense the more I saw you two around each other today. Just keep your relationship-related past times out of the office, please."

Derek was sidelined momentarily by the realization that his boss was aware of the night Aubrey and he had spent together. Hotchner went to walk away, and when Derek unfroze, he ran up behind him, asking him, "So, we're not going to get fired if we started dating?"

"If that were the case, half the Bureau would be gone by now," Hotchner said. "Feel free to date whomever you want. I certainly won't report you, and I'm sure the team will be glad that you're finally settling down."

"Well... thanks, Hotch," Derek said in surprise.

"Morgan, I doubt you would hold back if you didn't get my permission anyway," Hotchner said as Derek laughed, feeling the pressure lift from his shoulders as they walked toward the sound of music and mechanics.

"That's probably true," Derek admitted as they came face-to-face with the boss, informing him of his employee's death and asking him about his mob-related activities. The boss was quick to clam up, especially after Derek's sass talk, and they were essentially forced to leave the premises and to only return with warrants in hand.

After a tip from Elle following a hit on the guy that the witness saw running out of the DeMarco's house the night of the murder, Derek and Hotchner went to an address where they found an artificial dwelling with a gun in a hollowed-out section of the wall. After figuring out it was a law enforcement-issued gun, they ran the registration and found that he is an undercover officer, and one of Cramer's men. They returned to the BAU offices just before everyone was about to leave for the night, having no discernable leads that needed poring over.

Derek looked for Aubrey, but found she was not present. When he asked Spencer where she went, he revealed he just missed her. He raced down to the parking garage, finding her car as she walked toward it. He shouted her name and she turned, looking at him in surprise as he ran up to her.

"Hotch said it was okay," Derek said excitedly.

"What?" Aubrey asked in confusion, sounding breathless herself from the shock of Derek's little boy attitude.

"I talked to Hotch when we went on the run to the mob boss' house today. He said it was okay if we wanted to date, that there's nothing they can legally do to stop us," Derek said, taking Aubrey's hands in his. "Aubrey, we can do this, if you want to."

Aubrey looked up and met his eyes, and Derek's heart raced for a few minutes as he watched Aubrey's eyes change colors quickly. Before she had a chance to deny him, he leant forward, backing her up against the car as he leant down to crush his lips against hers. Instinctively, her arms went around his neck and his went around her waist. They kissed for a few minutes before they pulled away from each other, breathing and looking into each others' eyes. Derek, impatient as he was, asked after a few seconds of silence, "Your answer?"

Aubrey grinned at him, leaning up to kiss him one more time.

"We're doing this."


	9. The Revelation

Aubrey spent the night at Derek's- the first of many to come.

When she woke up, she found the spot next to her on the bed empty but still warm from Derek. She untangled herself from the sheets, slipping on his dress shirt from last night, grinning at herself in the mirror with confidence. She walked out to the smell of a delicious and multi-faceted breakfast, seeing Derek leaning over his stove with a towel over his shoulder. She smiled at the thought of Derek Morgan being domestic, an image that had never popped into her mind before.

She sauntered over to the counter, sitting behind him still as she asked him, "So, what's for breakfast?"

He turned to answer her, but stopped in mid thought as he saw her in his shirt, her legs crossed precariously over the edge of the counter. He smiled at her and said, "Baby girl, you know more than I do that I would love to throw you back on that bed, but we have to leave soon and we both still need to get ready and eat."

He looked back to the stove, turning it off for a second as he turned back to Aubrey, leaning up to kiss her as he slid his hands up her thighs. She wrapped her hands around his neck and he smiled, pulling away from her as he said, "I'll never get used to that."

"To what?" She asked, feigning innocence. He looked at her, turning back to the stove as he took whatever was on the surface, off, placing it onto their plates.

"As lame as this sounds, to the way you make me feel," Derek said honestly with his back toward her. Aubrey slid off the countertop and went on her tiptoes, putting her arms around his neck from the back as she leant forward and kissed him on the cheek.

"I hope you never do," Aubrey said as she moved away, sighing. "I'll go put some pants on."

Derek laughed. "Thank you, that would do wonders for my focus, or lack thereof currently."

Aubrey went back to the room, slipping on her outfit from last night, realizing she didn't have a change of clothing as she cussed. She couldn't walk into the BAU with the same outfit on as yesterday, because they would know she had slept over at Derek's.

She walked out of the room and said, "I'll have to go back to my place to get ready."

"I have shampoo or whatever you need," Derek said from his spot at the dining table. She sat down across from him, taking in the heaping amount of food he had put out for her: biscuits, toast, orange juice, coffee, milk, hash browns, bacon, eggs, and an assortment of cereal. She looked up at him with a gaping mouth.

"First off, holy food. I could feed a third world country with all this," Aubrey said. Derek smiled.

"I eat a lot because I work out a lot. I need the energy so, therefore, more food for me," Derek said, taking another heaping of eggs. "What's wrong with you getting ready here?"

"I don't have a change of clothes. If I walk in wearing the same outfit from yesterday, they'll notice and use their profiling powers to analyze everything that happened," Aubrey said. Derek snorted.

"They'll know within five seconds of either one of us stepping in the office. Hotch already knows, obviously, and we might as well tell them when we step in." Aubrey looked over at him, and he reached across the table, grabbing her hand. "I think they're onto us already, Aubrey."

She laughed and pulled away. "Well, still. I want to go home and change, after I eat this wonderful dinner. Problem is, my car is still at the Bureau since we drove home together last night."

"I could grab a quick shower, change my clothes, and we'll shoot over to your house so you can get ready," Derek suggested. Aubrey gave him a grateful smile as he piled forkful after forkful into his mouth, stripping on his way to the bathroom as Aubrey whistled after him.

One hour later, both of them were showered, changed, and fed and on their way to the BAU. When they arrived, holding hands, people looked at them but didn't comment. When they got to their respective desks, Elle looked up and smirked, saying, "Finally. Reid, pay up."

"You guys took bets on when this would happen?" Aubrey asked with not so much surprise in her voice. When it came to predicting things, she had a feeling her fellow BAU team mates would bet on anything just to prove that their profiling skills were still sharp.

"I thought you'd have the resilience to keep him at bay for a little bit longer. JJ agreed with me. Elle obviously just has no faith in you," Spencer said, obviously just bitter about losing the bet. Elle gave Aubrey an apologetic smile that told her she wasn't really sorry, but it didn't bother Aubrey as she laughed and took a seat behind her desk.

"So, we miss anything yet?" Aubrey asked. Elle shook her head as Aubrey stood back up saying, "Well, in that case, I'm going to go grab some more coffee. Anybody want anything?"

Everybody shook their heads or politely declined as Aubrey made her way over to the coffee pot, looking up as she saw Cramer walk in, fuming. She had a few moments to feel confused before he intercepted her path and she had to look appealing.

"Hey, Cramer, good morning," Aubrey said as Cramer pushed past her, rushing into Hotchner's office. Aubrey watched him in surprise as Gideon walked in after him, obviously pulling a private meeting.

Derek walked up with Spencer and asked Aubrey, "How do you know Cramer?"

"Before I joined the BAU, my dad wanted me to check out different branches to see what I would like better. He got people in each branch to show me around, and Cramer was my mentor from the organized crime unit. I can honestly say, I don't think I've ever seen him that upset," Aubrey said honestly. She looked over at Derek, bouncing out of her haze a little bit, as she smirked at him. "Why, you jealous?"

"Why should I be? You're mine, not his," Derek said, swooping down to kiss her on the cheek before walking away with Spencer and continuing their conversation. Aubrey watched through the window of Hotchner's office as Cramer yelled at him and Gideon, getting only calm responses in turn. She smiled, remembering how much he hated that Aubrey could be cool, calm, and collected in any situation. It was definitely a characteristic he lacked.

When he left, he made sure to apologize to Aubrey briskly before heading back out. She nodded at him in recognition before returning to the meeting room, which had become an art gallery of portraits from unsolved murders in the last fifteen years in the same area. Derek was alone, putting up more pictures as Penelope came in close behind Aubrey with another box full of case files.

"How many more are there?" Derek asked.

"So many, I don't think I can even count that high," Penelope said as she put down the box with an exhale. Aubrey started timidly brushing through the files as Penelope said, "If I had to make a realistic estimate, it'd be about a 100 in total."

Derek whistled, saying, "This guy has killed so many people."

"He's a hit man, what did you expect?" Aubrey asked. Derek inspected the board of the portraits that they already had, obviously trying to make more out of it than there was currently.

"The thing is, this guy isn't just a shoot and be gone kind of guy. He tortures and obviously enjoys what he does. He's a psychopath, and a serial killer with a perfect career. He's never been caught, and he doesn't plan to ever be caught," Derek said thoughtfully.

"So, what does that mean?" Penelope asked.

"Russo's got no idea what he's dealing with. I think we can shake him," Derek said as he grabbed his jacket. "Aubrey, Penelope, you guys stay here and keep going through the case files, see if anything catches your eye."

"Woah, wait a second, why I don't go with you, and we get the kid who can read five pages a second in here to look at case files?" Aubrey asked. Derek turned to face her.

"You are not going to a mob hangout. It's not safe for you," he said. Aubrey crossed her arms over her chest, raising both her eyebrows. Penelope looked on in surprise, knowing she was about to witness something great: a woman holding her own to Derek Morgan.

"I've done it before, and I'll do it again. Why not do it with my big, macho man beside me to protect me?" She asked in a sarcastic voice as Derek looked on with surprise, not used to being fought back with such sarcasm. Hotchner walked in and looked between them.

"What's going on?" he asked slowly.

"I thought me and you could go talk to Russo, reveal to him what's going on and see if we can't scare him into giving us some information," Derek said, making sure to emphasize the 'me and you'.

"Sounds good. Aubrey, can you help Penelope with the case files?" Hotchner asked innocently enough. Derek smiled triumphantly, and Aubrey clenched her teeth.

"You sure you don't need a third person on the mob run?" She asked casually. Hotchner shook his head.

"Right now, our main focus should be on when this UnSub has worked before," Hotchner said as he nodded at Derek, who leaned over and kissed Aubrey on the forehead. She sighed and he squeezed her hands, smiling at her hopefully.

"I'm sorry, baby. I'll see you later," he said, kissing her before walking out after Hotchner. Aubrey turned to Penelope and gave her a disbelieving look.

"Is he always that patronizing? I thought it'd get better once we started dating," Aubrey said. Penelope laughed, patting her on the shoulder consolingly as she passed her on her way to go grab more case files that were starting to collect dust in her office.

"You were horribly mistaken, my dear," Penelope said. "Derek means well, but you have to be clear with him where the boundaries are. It'll all work itself out. You guys are in the honeymoon stage still where you kind of need time to figure things out."

"Thanks, Penelope," Aubrey said genuinely as Penelope smiled at her and left the room. She became engrossed in the task that was poring herself over case files after case files of macabre scenes and murders, all left open with open questions. She was staring at her nearly completed board and didn't even notice Derek had walked in until his hands were on her shoulders.

He leant down to kiss her shoulder, asking her, "Are you still angry with me?"

"I'm not so much angry at you as I want you to understand that while I think it's sweet that you want to protect me and everything, you can't keep me from doing my job, Derek," Aubrey said. Derek sighed, nodding his head.

"I know. That was selfish of me, and I'm very sorry," he said. Aubrey smiled softly at him, leaning up to kiss him, pulling away soon after.

"It's okay. Just don't let it happen again," she said to him as he nodded dutifully, walking with her to where Elle was sorting through the evidence they had found in Vincent's car. Aubrey picked through all the leftovers and moldy food with two fingers, noting that there was nothing that looked grosser than molding Chinese takeout. They sorted and resorted through all the van's contents for about 45 minutes until Elle threw down the pizza box she had been holding.

"What are we missing here?" She asked Derek and Aubrey. Derek sat back on the desk, sighing.

"If I knew, it wouldn't be missed, now would it?" Derek asked. Elle gave him a look of contempt, and he sighed again. "Sorry, Elle."

"Okay, okay, our brains are tired, overworked, thinking of the same few situations over and over again. We need to step back and look at what we've got, and try and see it through clear eyes, okay?" Aubrey asked as she breathed in, pulling back her hair. "Okay, so we've got some tapes that Penelope and Spencer are looking through, a lot of trash, including random hamburger wrappers, Chinese takeouts, and pizza boxes..."

Elle's eyes lit up as she sat up straighter, gaining the attention of both Derek and Aubrey. "Wait. That's it."

"Pizza?" Aubrey asked in confusion.

"Where do you order your pizza from?" Elle asked.

"From the Papa John's around the corner," Derek said, in a slow way that implied he was still unaware of where Elle was going with her new idea.

"The means that he probably got this pizza from around where he lives. Although he's in his car when he eats it, he probably has a place nearby that he likes to frequent," Elle said as she held up the pizza box for them to view, where the name of the pizza shop he liked to go to was emblazoned on front. "We can look up its location, and then we can get a general idea for where he might live."

"I'll go see if Penelope and Spencer have gotten any more hits on the noises in the background of the tapes," Derek said as he went off to Penelope's cave.

"Let me know what you get, but I'm going to go return to my board of boredom," Aubrey said as she walked back to the meeting room, continuing the slow process of adding every picture to the board. Somehow she knew that the board would come in use later.

When she finished several minutes later, she didn't want to look at the board anymore, but something compelled her to give it a second look-over. When she did, she noticed a specific pattern that was as obvious as day, but had not seemed apparent until now, with all the pictures by each other.

She rushed out of the meeting room, finding the rest of the team clustered around where her desk was with Elle's, Derek's, and Spencer's. She walked over to them and they looked up at her, Hotchner being the one to ask, "What'd you find, Aubrey?"

"I finished putting up all the portraits, and something felt weird to me. I looked at each one very carefully, and although there are a few that seem androgynous, I noticed that none of his past victims have been women. This probably means that his father was the abusive one, and also abused the mother. While I suspect she was a rather absent mother, he still loved her immensely, and that's why his only female victim, Freddy's aunt, was such a quick kill compared to the torture he put all his male victims through," Aubrey said, breathing heavily as she rushed to get it all out. They all shared a surprised look at the revelation of this new fact, before they all stood up, one by one.

"You want to finish?" Gideon asked Hotchner, who nodded and turned toward the interrogation room. "Aubrey, why don't you go with him?"

Aubrey nodded and followed after Hotchner, waiting in the observatory room as she watched him slowly, ever so slowly, break Vincenct down by recounting the tales of his abusive father and submissive mother. Vincent finally snapped, saying, "Frank was a bastard, if that's what you want to know."

Hotchner didn't have to signal Aubrey in any way; she knew instantly what had to be done.

She walked out of the observatory room to where Penelope and Spencer were sharing their findings about the airplane noises in the background noise on the tapes they had found in Vincent's car. Their geographical profile fit to the same neighborhood that Elle's research on Vincent's preferred pizza shop did, and Aubrey added the last bit by saying, "Search for houses under Frank Perotta."

"Frank?" Penelope asked.

"His father. Nothing's in his name, because he's still living in his father's house. That's half the reason he's a psychopath. He hasn't cleared the area where he went insane," Aubrey said. Penelope's eyes lit up the same way she did every time she found gold.

"I've got the address. Sending it to your phones now," Penelope said.

"Let's go. I'll call Cramer and get some SWAT guys," Gideon said. He looked over at Aubrey and noticed she looked a little confused on wether she should stay or go, and he said, "Do you want to stay with Hotchner?"

She nodded, smiling comfortably as she relaxed. "I'm sure he'd appreciate his own back-up."

"I'll see you later, okay?" Derek said as he kissed Aubrey and rushed out after the rest of the team. Aubrey returned to the observatory room, watching as Hotchner continued to steer Vincent down Bad Memory Lane. He was inching closer and closer to his one big tantrum when Aubrey got the text from Derek telling her that they had found Jim Baker, alive. She gave the motion to the FBI arresting officers, who rushed into the room, Aubrey close behind them.

"I don't fault you for what you've done. With your upbringing, it's no surprise that you're a killer. Most people who grow up in that situation become killers," Hotchner said, almost sympathetically. He went to go walk out the door, Aubrey nearby, when Vincent called him back.

"Agent Hotchner," he beckoned as Hotchner turned to look at him curiously. "What do you mean _most_ of us do?"

Hotchner met his eyes evenly for a few moments, letting the words rest into silence before answering.

"Some grow up to catch the killers," Hotchner said as the men in control of Vincent took him out of the room. Hotchner left as well, and Aubrey walked out into the hallway after him, watching him walk away in wonder at the realization that someone like Hotchner had a dark past and still held his head high on his shoulders.

"Hotch," she said softly in the now quiet hallway. He froze, obviously having forgotten Aubrey had been there, and turned slowly to face her. She took a few steps toward him and put a hand on his arm, saying, "If you need anything, especially to talk, you know where to find me."

Aubrey walked away from him, leaving him in stunned silence due to the fact that Aubrey, who had been trained to ask questions until someone didn't know the answers about themselves anymore, just let the matter go. Hotchner knew he could trust her with his secret past, but he was surprised that she let him sit back like he wanted to.

He thought about it for a moment, and noticed too late that Aubrey's words hadn't been sympathetic; they had been empathetic, meaning she had gone through a similar situation before.

Meaning she had a dark past, too.


	10. The Hostage Situation

Aubrey walked in the second morning in a row with her hand intertwined with Derek's. While they still received less stares than the day before, it was clear it was going to take the office time to adjust to not only an inter-bureau relationship, but one that included Derek Morgan.

When they got to their desks, Aubrey asked Spencer, "Hey, where's Elle?"

"She got assigned a custodial interview by Hotch late last night. She shipped out soon after," Spencer said, typing away at something on his computer. Aubrey scoffed, obviously offended.

"I wonder why she got a custodial by herself. I still have to have a chaperone," Aubrey said bitterly as she opened up her e-mail and started running through the motions of a regular office day. For now, JJ's desk lay clear of any obvious cases for them to work on, and Aubrey was thankful for the break. Perhaps it was better she didn't get the custodial.

As if reading her mind celebrating the break, JJ walked in and said, "Guys, meeting room."

Aubrey sighed. "Seriously? I was just getting used to being able to finish my paperwork."

JJ smiled timidly and said, "You might be interested to know that we've got a hostage situation. Metting room, now."

Aubrey, Spencer, and Derek all quickly stood up from their desks, walking together toward the meeting room. Derek looked over at his girlfriend and saw the smirk on her face, replicating it with one of his own as he asked, "What's got your mood changed?"

"Justice at last. Elle gets a custodial, I get a hostage situation. I'll take my straw any day," Aubrey said as she slipped off of Derek's desk and led him into the meeting room, where JJ ran a security tape from the train showing the UnSub and his victims, including a police officer dead on the floor with a bullet in his chest. Aubrey pressed her lips together.

"Can you move it back a few frames?" Spencer asked JJ, regarding the video. She did as he asked, and he told the rest of the room as the screen froze on a particularly unappealing expression, "He has severe facial ticks, which are usually caused by longtime use of psychotic medicines."

"So, what we got?" Gideon asked, interrupting the flow as he usually did. He studied the screen as JJ filled him in, telling him it was a train on Texas. He froze and said, "Elle."

"What about... ?" Aubrey trailed off, laughing. "You're not telling me Elle is on that train, are you?"

Gideon pointed to the screen, to a blurred profile that, when pointed out, Aubrey recognized as her friend and co-worker. She whitened considerably, regretting her earlier words, as Gideon told the rest of the crew, "Wheels up in 20. Make it quick, we need to get to Texas."

They did as he commanded, making it onto the plane and listening almost the whole way to Spencer shouting off random facts and examples of people with intense psychosis. Aubrey felt her eyes beginning to roll into the back of her head from boredom, but she made herself focus for Elle, if not for anything else.

When they landed, they made connection with the agents from the Dallas field office that were already at the train's location, who claimed that the only contact that they had from the UnSub was a request to speak to a 'higher authority'. After they got off of the phone with the Dallas field agents, Aubrey, who had volunteered to climb into the far back row of the SUV with Spencer, spoke up.

"Is there any possible connection to religion? Like, is he asking for the Messiah to walk up to the window and save him?" Aubrey asked.

"There was no religious mention. I'm thinking he simply means someone higher up in the government," JJ said honestly.

"Then let's not disappoint," Gideon said, turning to Hotchner, who was driving the car. "Turn on the sirens and pull in there like you deserve the front row seat. Make people move out of our way, and get as close to the barrier as possible. We'll show him some higher authority."

Hotchner did what Gideon said, flipping on the lights and sirens as they pulled up to the crime scene. They all got out of the car, receiving a warm welcome from one of the Dallas FBI field agents.

"I'm Agent Frank Moretti, head of the Dallas FBI field office," he said, holding out his hand to each of the BAU members for them to shake. "We haven't had any changes- all hostages are still safe, and no additional contact. If you all would like to make your way to the mobile command center, we can discuss how we would like to go about for the 3 hour contact."

"If you excuse me, I just wish to have a few words with the SWAT team leader," Hotchner said.

Moretti nodded, pointing to a cop car. "He's stationed out behind that cruiser. If the rest of you would follow me..."

JJ left the group to go talk to some press that had begun to show up, essentially shooing them away while Spencer, Gideon, Aubrey, and Derek followed Moretti into the command center.

"The number we called earlier is written on the paper next to the phone," Agent Moretti said, taking a seat at a chair in front of the only computer in the room. The phone was hooked up to an elaborate system, like the ones they used for ransom calls that could be muted, traced, and warped any way they wished. "I called him earlier and told him I was the highest authority, but he didn't believe me."

"First off, this man is a paranoid psychotic. His whole delusion is based on lies, fueled by lies, and fearing lies. Second off, the higher authority wouldn't come to him, the lower level. He has to come to us," Gideon said slowly. Aubrey looked up at the screen feeding live security footage from the train, and saw the UnSub grab one of the women by the hair, forcing her down the aisle toward the phone.

"He's on the move," Aubrey said as everybody else's eyes moved up toward the screen, watching him push the woman down to the ground. They watched her shake with sobs as the phone began ringing. Gideon gently pushed past Derek and Spencer as he picked up the phone.

"Yes?" He asked simply. They could hear whispering from the other line, and Aubrey could also hear the echo of her own heartbeat in her ears, the command center had fallen that quiet.

"He wants to know who you are," the woman said shakily.

"Tell him I'm someone that can resolve the situation," Gideon said, cool, calm, and collected like always. They heard the woman relay the information, then more of the whispering, presumably from the UnSub telling her what to say. Aubrey kept her eyes on the screen, her hand on her cell and ready to dial Hotchner if anything went wrong. She looked over at Spencer and found him focused on the UnSub, studying every movement and every twitch.

The woman piped up again. "What part of the government do you work for?"

"I never said I worked for the government," Gideon said. Aubrey felt her stomach churn as she put herself in the woman's shoes. To hear Gideon's calm voice would give Aubrey the sense that he was apathetic to her situation, if she were freaking out as bad as the hostage was. She wanted to reach out and tell Gideon to be more gentle, but she knew it was an act for the sake of catching the UnSub.

They watched as the UnSub's mouth moved rapidly, hearing him over the phone line asking her if they worked for various parts of the government, naming each branch. She cried out in fear and he turned, looking over to Elle, as they heard the word 'FBI'. Gideon let slow smile cross his face, an almost proud smile of the psycho making the right conclusion.

"Are you FBI?" The woman asked, sounding a little hopeful.

"He can ask me himself," Gideon replied back smartly. Aubrey squeezed her cell phone, biting her lip with concern at the same time. They saw the woman hand the phone to the UnSub, who snatched it from her.

"Tell me who you are, or this agent dies," the UnSub said.

"You know who I am," Gideon answered back, with an almost self-satisfied smile on his face. It was moments like those where Aubrey saw a definitive line between the Gideon who had become like a father to her since her own father's death, and the mess he had become that he hid so well.

The UnSub's voice bounced her out of her own thoughts.

"If you're the higher authority, then you can have it removed," he said, almost pleading. Aubrey forgot about her own problems, forgot about the hostage's anxiety, forgot about anything but the single word the UnSub had spoken: it. Like working through a 1000 piece puzzle, Aubrey began figuring out which pieces went where and what fit together.

Gideon shook his head as if the UnSub could see him. "It'll take some time."

"I want it removed, now," the UnSub said, lest desperate this time and more commanding. Derek stepped forward- to do what, Aubrey didn't know. She felt the concerns of Spencer, Derek, and Moretti rising, while Gideon kept his game face.

"You know it can't be done that quickly. Goodbye."

They all looked over at Gideon in surprise, with concern etched on their faces as the desperation of the UnSub became clear. He yelled at Gideon, bringing him back to the phone with the promise, "One hour. You have one hour to remove it, or I swear to God, I'll kill every agent on this train."

He hung up the phone, silence consuming the command center. Moretti, impatient as he was not being a BAU agent, asked almost rudely, "It? Do you know what it is?"

Gideon shook his head, admitting defeat. "No. But I got us one more hour to figure it out."

Aubrey looked over in concern at the screen, where the UnSub was cradling his own head. One of the hostages, a tall, ethnic looking young man who the UnSub had hit with the butt of his guns not thirty minutes before and was being tended to by the older woman, stood up and said something to the UnSub that provoked him. The older woman stepped in the way, grabbing the UnSub's arm and turning it over. Aubrey squinted, getting closer to the screen.

"What do you see?" Gideon asked, obviously already knowing the answer.

"Scars. Deep wounds, by the looks of the scars that have formed. The skin is puckered, meaning stitches," Aubrey said, counting them. "About five in all."

"So, what's he trying to dig out?" Hotchner asked, having moved in when Aubrey was intently watching the security screen earlier.

"Many psychotics and fanatics believe that the government is always watching them. Some of the crazier ones believe that microchips have been implanted in them to do so. I think he's trying to dig out a microchip put there by the government," Spencer said. Aubrey knew that if the case had been different, she probably would've cracked a smile. She couldn't even feel the corners of her mouth twitch now.

"So, how do we go about this?" Derek asked.

"We play along with his delusions," Hotchner said as if it were obvious. "Reid, what can you tell me about delusions when dealing with psychotic patients?"

"They're very dependent on the patient- personal traumas, fears, experiences all factor into what they imagine is happening to them," Spencer said, admitting, "If we can't find out who he is, there's a very slim chance we'll be able to play into his delusions."

As if answering some unspoken prayer, Derek's received a call from Penelope, who had used her face recognition system to label each hostage as well as the UnSub. After doing some research on each respective person, they found that Elle was locked in a train car with a psychotic ex-physicist, his psychiatrist who doubled as an author on psychological issues and treatments in her spare time, a paper product salesman, an unemployed woman, and the young man who had been expelled from his college after drinking and driving and crashing into the school library.

"Well, we certainly aren't the winners of the year, now are we?" Aubrey asked drily. "I was really hoping there'd be a Jason Gideon-James Bond hybrid on there."

"So, now we need to focus on how to remove a microchip that isn't there," Hotchner said just as drily as Aubrey's previous comment. She watched anxiously as Josh Patel, the drunk, stood up and obviously tried to make a petition with the UnSub before Dr. Deaton moved in and sat him back down. She looked back over to Hotchner, but he was mainly focusing on Spencer, who was pacing in the command center.

"His speaking is lucid, which means his thoughts are also pretty organized even though he's having delusions. His thoughts are organized within that delusion," Spencer said, almost in his own world like he usually was.

"He knows that the micro chip is in his arm. We can't say that it's in his back or anything, which means he'll be watching whatever incision we do make," Aubrey said.

"Why can't we just convince him that it's somewhere else?" Derek asked, sounding almost tired. Spencer brightened, gaining everybody's attention.

"We could fake it." When everybody looked at him with blank expressions, he picked up a coin from the desk beside him. "We could do a little trick of the palm, a little slight of hand."

"You're saying we should perform a magic trick on the UnSub?" Derek asked for clarification, sounding very dubious. When Spencer nodded, and Hotchner, Gideon, nor Aubrey disagreed with Spencer's idea, Derek sighed and stood up. "Alright, teach it to me."

"No," Spencer said, sounding adamant. Aubrey rose her eyebrows in surprise, as did Derek. It was a change of pace for Spencer to be putting his own against Derek. "I've been learning this my whole life, we only have thirty minutes."

Aubrey smiled, seeing for once the confident Spencer in a different way. Whereas he usually shone only in presenting facts and stats, he really hid away his want to do more behind that. Aubrey remembered meeting Spencer the first day she came into the BAU, and how he could barely meet her eye or shake her hand. Now, here he was, insisting on putting himself in danger despite Derek's protest.

Aubrey stepped forward and put her hand around Derek's bicep. "Let him go."

Derek looked down at his girlfriend in protest, but Gideon nodded as well. Hotchner and Derek rushed Spencer off to get him prepped for the train, while JJ re-entered and she, Gideon, and Aubrey sat down to do more research on the hostages and the UnSub, finding out he was a world-renowned physicist who had once worked for the government, and who later had a mental break and had been institutionalized for the last several years.

His outing on the train was his first since he had been institutionalized- his stressor.

Gideon sighed, saying, "Let's make the call."

He walked over to the phone, JJ and Aubrey waiting anxiously to see what the UnSub would do. They looked up at the screen to see him pointing a gun at his doctor, but the minute the phone began ringing, he walked to and answered, "What?"

"Everything alright, Dr. Bryar?" Gideon asked casually, as if he were calling up an old friend.

Dr. Bryar sounded like he was going to cry. "I want it out."

"I'm sending two technicians in to remove it," Gideon assured him.

"No!" Bryar shouted, sounding almost fearful. "One. One technician."

"It's a delicate procedure, it requires-"

Bryar cut Gideon off, insistent. "No! Only one, or every agent on this train dies."

Gideon sighed, sounding like he was talking to an overeager child now. "You've got to relax. You've still got twenty minutes."

"Not anymore. I want it out. Now. Right now. Now!" Dr. Bryar shouted as he hung up the phone. Gideon let it rest for a few seconds, and Aubrey bit her lip again nervously. Although the original plan had been to send Derek in with Spencer, she knew that Spencer would have to go in alone by himself now.

But wasn't that she wanted for him? For him to succeed on his own, for him to realize that he could trust in himself?

Derek and Spencer returned to the command center, where Derek strapped him up in a bulletproof jacket, telling him not to take it off, not to make eye contact with Elle, and to suspect that SWAT could shoot at any time without his prior knowledge, running through the checklist like an older brother making sure his younger brother didn't get beat up at school. Aubrey watched silently with Gideon as Spencer answered each of Derek's questions thoughtfully and correctly, even making a joke when Derek told him to play into the guy's fantasy.

They walked outside to Hotchner, who handed Spencer a microchip to test his slight of hand with. After failing a few times, Gideon, who was obviously just as nervous as the rest of them, said, "I'm pulling the plug."

"No, no, no," Spencer said quickly, desperate to appease. "I can do this. I am just not used to it being this small. Usually whatever I'm flipping is bigger."

"Just relax, Spence, okay?" Aubrey said gently, shooting a look to Gideon to keep his mouth shut. "Do it a few more times. You've done this a million times, it's just a different size. Adjust."

Spencer tried one more time, and was able to flip it successfully from his fingers to his palm. He did it a few more times to make Gideon feel better, and finally was given the go from Hotchner and Gideon, who was quick to add, "You take out the chip, and you get out of there, am I clear? Say you've got guidelines or something to follow with the higher authority. Do not stay on the train."

"Yes, sir," Spencer said, turning on his heel as he walked toward the train.

"See you when you get back," Hotchner said to him, earning a thankful but fearful smile from Spencer, who continued his trek toward the train.

"You know, if anything, he's the perfect man for the job," Aubrey said thoughtfully. Hotchner and Derek looked over at her curiously, Gideon keeping his eye on Spencer. "He's nervous. A field agent wouldn't be. A technician would, though."

"Yeah, well, let's hope it subsides for at least a little bit so he can complete his trick," Hotchner said. Aubrey walked up next to Derek as he put his arm around her waist, both of them watching anxiously as he entered the train. Derek led Aubrey back to the command center, where they watched through the cameras with JJ and Gideon as Spencer took out the micro chip successfully. However, he didn't leave the train right after like Gideon had commanded him to.

"What is he doing?" Gideon asked angrily. "I told him to leave the train!"

"Something's wrong," JJ pointed out. "Spencer looks like he's stuck, mentally."

"No," Aubrey said, shaking her head. "That doesn't happen. Not to Spence."

Gideon reached over and called Bryar, watching as Josh stood up again, spouting off something as he passionately gestured. Dr. Deaton went to intercept him again, but somehow, for some reason, Bryar just snapped, standing up and pulling the trigger.

Deaton covered her stomach, blood seeping through her fingers. Gideon cussed and Aubrey let out a little gasp as Deaton fell back, Josh looking guilty and sick as he held her. The paper salesman reached over and tried to help, Reid rushing back as well as Bryar went to answer the phone. When he answered, Gideon quickly collected his cool.

"What happened, Bryar?" He asked.

"I'm so tired of fighting you," Bryar answered tiredly. "It all ends today."

He hung up the phone, and turned back to his hostages, taking a seat on the bench across from Elle and rocking back and forth. Gideon cussed again as JJ sent Aubrey an inquisitive look. She answered JJ's unasked question by saying, "Bryar's revealed his end game. He's going to kill himself, and the hostages."

JJ looked back to the security screen with renewed alarm, watching as Spencer talked to Bryar, who then responded by turning to the phone and shooting it, breaking the contact he had with the team. Gideon pulled a hand over his head, obviously concerned about all of the hostages' safety, but now even more so involved considering Spencer was involved.

"We're going to have to send in SWAT," Gideon said. Hotchner nodded and left to go inform the leader.

"Gideon, we can't sent in SWAT. Those hostages will die," Derek said as Aubrey looked on in concern.

"If we don't do anything, those hostages will die," Gideon clarified. He watched with alarm as Bryar stood up abruptly, his gun pointed toward Spencer this time. They watched as Spencer stood up, advancing toward Bryar with his hands raised, obviously trying to talk to him. Gideon looked down at his watch and said, "This has been going on for too long. I'm going in."

"Gideon..." Aubrey said, trying to stop him as he rushed outside, walking toward the train. Aubrey, Derek, and JJ turned their attention back to the security screen, watching as something forced Bryar down and Spencer struggled with him on one of the train's benches.

Then, they heard the gunshot.


	11. The First Surprise

Aubrey covered her mouth, JJ turned away from the screen, and Derek put an arm around Aubrey's waist instinctively, protectively, as it seemed that everything on the security screen and in the train came to a still. Aubrey could feel Derek's heart beating as she leant against his chest, and watched as Spencer backed away from an unconscious Bryar.

"Oh, my God," Aubrey said, shooting out of the door, Derek, and JJ close on her heels. They all took out their guns, running onto the train behind Gideon as they took in the scene. The paper salesman was standing in the corner, frozen with his hands on a gun. Derek quickly walked over to him and disarmed him, while Gideon walked over to Spencer and Bryar. Aubrey followed Gideon as JJ worked on getting Elle out of her handcuffs.

Aubrey reached over, feeling Bryar's pulse, taking into account that the gunshot was only a shoulder wound. She sighed as she announced, "He's still alive. Get me an ambulance."

The EMTs rushed on board almost immediately, strapping Bryar down to a stretcher and carting him off the train and to the ambulance. Derek walked with him the whole entire way, the only force that could stop Bryar if he had another mental break due to being tied down. Bryar had brute strength, especially when upset, and Derek was the only one who had a chance of subduing him if need be.

Aubrey, meanwhile, walked with Spencer and a freed Elle, waiting for her as an EMT stitched up the skin where her head had busted after Bryar had hit her with the butt of his gun. After she was all ready to go, the BAU team made their way back to the tar mac, making for a long ride home in the silence of the plane. Almost everybody slept as the day had exhausted them, due to the stress of potentially losing Elle and then Spencer.

When they landed, Hotchner gave them the rest of the day off as they went their different ways. Aubrey and Derek left the office the same way they had entered that morning- with their hands interlocked. When they got into the elevator, cherishing the fact that they were the only two there, Derek turned to Aubrey and said, "I've got a favor to ask you."

"What's that?" She asked him, curiously, meeting his eyes with a smile.

"Will you come to the shooting range with me, maybe spar with me a few times? I want to make sure you're not woefully unprepared like Reid was today, in case something does go wrong." Aubrey stared at Derek, and he quickly added, "I have confidence in you, probably more than I do in the rest of this team besides Hotch. But I want to see you in action and know that I feel justly confident."

Aubrey sighed. "I mean, I was all for going home and getting into bed..."

She meant it as a joke, but when she looked over and saw Derek's unwavering, serious expression, she realized how genuinely concerned he was. She sighed and nodded, saying "Fine" as she jabbed the number for the training floor. Derek smiled at her, leaning over to kiss her on the side of her head.

"Thank you," he said, relief flooding through his voice. The elevator doors opened and he looked over at Aubrey, asking, "Gun range first?"

"Sounds good to me," Aubrey said as Derek took her hand and led her to the gun range. She signed out a gun and bullets from the front desk, grabbing a bar of earmuffs and glasses as well as she followed Derek in to the shooting range. He was setting up her targets, and she smiled as she loaded her gun. Derek gave her a thumbs up as she shot three times in a row, pulling away to see only one large hole, right int he center of the chest. She turned to Derek.

His jaw was practically on the ground.

She grinned, taking off her earmuffs as she said, "Did I pass your test yet?"

"Not yet," Derek said, becoming more playful just like Aubrey. "You still have to pass the physical part of it. You're going to go against me in combat."

"Whatever you wish, Der," Aubrey said, prancing to the locker room as Derek watched after her in wonder, thinking about all the possible places where she could've possible learned to shoot like that without having gone through years of training. He sighed as he went to the locker room, switching out of his work cloths and into his gym clothes, exiting as he saw Aubrey wearing yoga pants and a tight tank top. He thought a second about taking up her previous suggestion of returning home and getting into bed, but shook his head to retain his focus. He wanted to see, wanted to be reassured, that Aubrey could protect herself if the case presented itself.

They went into the combat room, where Derek told Aubrey, "Don't hold back."

"So, that means I can beat you up and not feel bad about it later?" Aubrey asked with a smirk on her face. Derek smirked back at her, shaking his head as he settled back onto the balls of his feet, his fists curling as he raised them.

"You are in for a surprise," Derek said. Aubrey shook her head, still smirking.

"No, baby, you are," she said as she swung her leg underneath Derek's feet, bringing him down. She pulled back, laughing, as he pushed himself back up, looking at her in surprise. She smiled at him, dancing on her feet as she asked him, "Want to stop now?"

"No, not now. Not yet," Derek said as he reached forward to grab Aubrey and bring her down. She dodged him, using her leg to take him off balance again as he scrambled back up and brought her down with brute force, tackling her to the ground. He let his heaviness weigh on her as she pushed up with her fist.

"Holy... !" Derek said, rolling over as he grabbed his nose. Aubrey jumped up and straddled him, apologizing over and over again as she laughed. Derek groaned as he said, "Oh, my God, Aubrey, I think you broke my nose."

"Well, now you know I'm capable of doing so," Aubrey said, still laughing as Derek sat up, pressing her between his bent legs and his torso. She grabbed at his fingers, trying to pry them off of his face as she told him, "Dear God, Der, loosen your iron grip so I can look at it."

"I should just go to the Bureau doctor," Derek said, shutting his eyes as he tipped his head back, still clutching his nose and surrounding facial area. Aubrey, persistent as always, still tried to unlock his fingers from his nose.

"Derek Morgan, I graduated from Johns Hopkins with a medial degree and doctorate in Biology. I've broken my nose at least three times. Let me fix you," Aubrey said, her voice calm as Derek released his grip like she had spoken some spell to force him to do. She smiled at him as she leaned away from him, and Derek opened his eyes to see her taking off her shirt.

"Woah, what are you doing?" He asked, not willing to have sex in the Bureau building during office hours. While Derek claimed to be adventurous, that was going a little too far for even him.

Aubrey snorted, revealing her conservative sports bra underneath. She wadded up her shirt as she said, "I need to use something to sop up the blood and for pressure afterward, and I would ask you for your shirt, but it's already covered. Don't worry about my lack of shirt, I have an extra in the locker room. Stop being a baby-slash-prude and just sit still."

Derek shut his eyes tight again, feeling Aubrey clean up his face and nose of any blood. She touched his nose and he winced, as she told him, "It's just bruised. No dislocations, swelling isn't normal for a break. Now, hold this shirt to your face and let me run to the locker room to get a shirt on so we can go back upstairs and get a professional opinion."

Derek did what she asked, listening to her run away and return moments later. She helped him stand up and guided him out of the training room and into the elevator, keeping the conversation light and distracting as they made their way back up to the BAU level. When they stepped out, Derek heard a single gasp that was all too familiar to him.

"What happened to you?" Penelope asked, rushing forward to touch him. She helped him sit down as Aubrey told him that she was going to go find their physician they kept around for moments like these. Derek groaned and Penelope asked, "Were you guys doing something weird?"

"No, we were train..." Derek sat up straighter. "Penelope!"

"Hey, I'm sorry, some people are into weird stuff, and because you guys just started a relationship, I wasn't sure if you were testing the boundaries of that weird stuff. I'm sorry, I have a horrible mouth that goes before my brain tells it to stop, especially in tense moments like these. Oh, good, Aubrey is back," Penelope said quickly, obviously wanting an excuse to leave.

"Agent Morgan," the physician said calmly, most bored. Obviously when he signed up to be an on-site physician for the FBI, he didn't think that he was going to be fixing broken noses. He had probably joined for the possible thrill of gunshot wounds and knife extractions, but all of the serious cases were moved to the ER. The physician was just a precaution, mostly. "What seems to be the problem here?"

"Agent Bentley here punched me in the nose when we were sparring, and I think she broke it," Derek said. The physician touched around just as Aubrey had, albeit a little rougher with Derek, who winced under the pressure. The physician sighed, pulling away.

"It's just bruised, as Agent Bentley had previously said. Do you want a prescription for painkillers?" The physician asked, sounding painfully bored now as he realized he didn't even have a broken bone to fix. Derek shook his head, then shook the physician's hand. "Agent Morgan. Agent Bentley, always a pleasure."

The physician walked away, and Derek looked up at his girlfriend, who smirked at him. "Nice bruise."

"What's up with the physician saying 'always a pleasure'?" Derek asked, obviously jealous. Aubrey laughed and Derek stood up from where he was sitting, looking down at Aubrey now as he asked, "Seriously. What's up with that?"

"He's just saying it's a pleasure to talk to me, I guess! I get his science stuff and whatnot. I bet he says the same to Reid." Aubrey grabbed the front of Derek's shirt, using it to pull her up onto her tiptoes so she could kiss him. "Stop being so jealous, Der. It's nice of you to be protective, but there's a line where it goes from hot to infuriating."

"Aren't the two the same thing?" Derek asked flirtatiously. Aubrey smirked at him.

"So, I guess you're ready to go home, then?" Aubrey asked, slipping her hands around his ribs. He placed his hands on her waist, smiling down at her.

"I've been ready. I just wanted to make sure you knew how to protect yourself, and obviously, you do," Derek said as Aubrey laughed. He leant down to kiss her forehead real quick, then pulled away as he slipped an arm around her waist. He found himself relax, and found that it was different with Aubrey than it was with other girls. There was no need to constantly impress, and no concern with how to entertain her once they got home. While Derek had always crossed off relationships as being too complicated and requiring too much effort, here he was, enjoying one more than he would a one night stand.

And it was all thanks to Aubrey.


	12. The Nightmares

Aubrey walked into the BAU feeling restful for the first time in a long time. After spending the night with Derek for almost a straight two weeks now, she had finally caught up on all the sleep she had been deprived of since her freshman year of college. Although at first it had been the work, her occupation caused nightmares that Derek's embrace seemed to resolve.

Derek and Aubrey walked to the kitchenette area to grab their coffee, as Derek watched Spencer pour half of the sugar container into his coffee. He laughed and said, "Hey, Reid, calm down. Why don't you have some coffee with your sugar?"

"I need something to wake me up," Spencer said. Aubrey's eyebrows furrowed in both concern for Reid and frustration as she searched the fridge for her favorite creamer. She had put one of the recruits in charge for checking it and restocking it when it got low. She knew it was cruel, but it was also the way the hierarchy of the Bureau worked.

"Late night?" Derek asked sarcastically. Aubrey rolled her eyes, glad she could hide her expressions in the fridge as Spencer didn't answer. Derek laughed and she heard a pat, knowing Derek had probably clapped one of his hands on Spencer's shoulder. "My man!"

"Not a Morgan kind of late night," Spencer cut back as Aubrey snorted. Derek hip bumped her as she hip bumped back, and he turned back to Spencer.

"Well, what does keep the Dr. Spencer Reid up at night? Re-reading your whole library in a few hours? Proving the Big Bang Theory? Oh, I know- watching Star Trek and correcting the physics mistakes," Derek said, obviously sounding proud of himself for coming up for the jaunts. Aubrey grabbed her creamer from the fridge and slammed the door shut, glaring at her boyfriend as she put the creamer in her mug. He didn't even register her stare.

"Actually, there aren't that many physics errors in Star Trek. I counted 41 in total." Spencer started rattling off a long list of everything that was wrong with the Star Trek movie, and Derek looked caught.

Aubrey laughed and snidely said to him, "That's what you get for messing with Spence."

"Aubrey!" Hotchner called from the door of the Round Table Room, motioning her toward him with his finger. She patted Derek on his shoulder, smirking at him.

"Karma's a bitch, sweetie, just remember that," Aubrey said as she leant up to kiss Derek on the cheek. He grunted and waited for a few more of Spencer's examples of physics errors before Spencer trailed off. Derek looked at him in confusion, and Spencer sighed.

"I wanted to talk to you about something without Aubrey around, hence the nervous list of physics errors," Spencer said, looking down at his coffee. "I haven't been able to sleep lately because I've been getting these dreams."

Derek looked curiously at Spencer. "Dreams?"

"More like nightmares." Spencer sighed, hesitating before he finally asked, "I was just wondering, have you ever gotten them before?"

Derek thought for several beats about the proper response to Spencer's question. It had to contain enough fluff to protect his emotions, but had to contain enough science for Spencer to deem it reasonable. Derek finally gave up, sighing as he said, "I don't think I'm the right person to be talking to about this, Reid."

Spencer gave Derek an exasperated look. "Then who is?"

Derek gave Spencer an obvious look. "Gideon."

As if feeling that he was needed, Gideon peeked out of the Round Table room and beckoned to Derek and Spencer, making it obvious that they had a case that needed to be discussed. Derek gave Spencer a look that told him to act on Derek's advice, and Spencer sighed and led the way to the meeting room, where the rest of the team was already waiting for them.

Derek took a seat next to Aubrey, placing his arm on the back of her chair. She was already looking at a case file, her eyebrows furrowed as she shielded it away from Derek. JJ stood up the moment the door closed, telling them, "Two bodies were found in McAllister this morning. One was a skeleton, and one was a fresh kill. The connection is a similar cause of death- a blow to the head, executed in the same manner- as well as a similar disposal site."

"What's with the hush and rush?" Derek asked, the words mostly dictated to his girlfriend, who was still shielding her case file away from him.

"Evidence was found that, if released, could cause a public uproar," Hotchner said. Derek gave him an impatient look to elaborate as Hotchner complied, telling Derek, "There was evidence that the murders may have been committed by a Satanic cult. There's almost no evidence submitted, as you see by the sparse case files, so we need to get there while the crime scene is still relatively fresh. Also, we need crowd control when we get there."

"Why is that so important?" Elle asked.

"It can cause a panic," Spencer said simply, obviously about to spew off a random incident that was an example of the panic he described. Aubrey reached over and calmly placed a hand over his mouth, smiling at him and then at the rest of the group.

"We should probably leave before he starts talking again," Aubrey said conspiratorially.

Hotchner nodded. "Let's get going."

When they arrived in McAllister, Aubrey and Spencer were sent with Gideon and JJ to go look at the skeletal remains they had found, to see what they could find out. After determining the first victim was a male who died several years ago, Spencer's intelligence managed to be his ailment once again as he accidentally wounded the sheriff, John Bridges, who was confused and obviously threatened by Spencer's brain. After getting into a bit of a heated argument with Gideon about the possibility of missing a secret Satanic cult in his area, Aubrey and JJ quickly corralled the boys back up to the top of the hill to meet up with everybody else and just cool off.

When they got to the top of the hill, they didn't have much time to cool off before a hysterical woman came running up to the crime scene, screaming "Cherish! Cherish!"

Aubrey looked over at her boyfriend inquisitively, but he shrugged; he was as clueless as she was. The woman, after being okayed by the sheriff, was allowed underneath the caution tape as she ran up to the Bridges, grabbing him by the shirt as she said, "Was Adam Boyd killed here?"

"Ma'am, you know we can't-"

"My daughter was with him!" She cried, obviously having a bit of a meltdown. "Cherish! She went running with him this morning and never returned... I can't find her! My baby! My Cherish!"

"Ma'am, ma'am," Bridges said, grabbing her by the arms. "We need you to calm down. One of my deputies and one of the FBI agents will take your statement, and we will start looking for your daughter immediately."

"She isn't here?" The woman asked, almost in a daze it seemed. "She isn't dead?"

"She isn't here," the sheriff said, expertly dodging the second question. "We are going to go look for her."

One of the deputies walked up at the sheriff's motion, calmly and gently taking away the woman. Hotchner nodded at Elle, who walked over to the woman and the deputy helping her, before turning back to his team. He told them, "Derek and Aubrey, I want you two to do an area canvas. Walk around, see if you can find any secret paths, drag marks, that kind of thing."

They nodded as they headed out toward the woods, not talking as they both entered their own world of profile investigation. Aubrey looked up at one point to tell Derek that she hadn't found anything, but saw that she was alone, surrounded by trees.

"Derek?" She asked slowly, putting her hand over her gun on her waistband. "Derek?"

"Hey." She heard a voice say as she turned and pointed a gun at Derek, who put his hands up as his eyes went wide. "Woah, woah, woah. Put the gun down, Bree."

"Sorry," she said as she holstered her gun, pulling back her hair. "There's nothing I like less than being alone in a forest."

"Why's that?" Derek asked casually enough as they made their way back to where Hotchner and the rest of the team were waiting for them. Aubrey didn't answer them right away, and Derek looked over at her in concern, knowing she usually had a real or sarcastic answer for every question, whether it was meant to be answered or not. He found her walking ahead with focus that he knew had stemmed from ignoring his question. He asked again, "Aubrey, why don't you like forests?"

They came back out into the open, and Aubrey said, "We better tell Hotch that the UnSub is probably a local", before walking away from Derek to do so. He looked after her in confusion, but knew better to push it. Aubrey tended to clam up about things if she was pressed for too long.

After revealing to Hotchner their findings, Gideon assigned JJ to go talk the sheriff into using volunteers from the community as a search team, knowing the UnSub wouldn't be able to fight his wish to be in the investigation. JJ and Spencer left with the sheriff soon after to return to town for volunteers, and for contact with Penelope regarding some of the Satanic symbols they had found at the crime scene.

Within the hour, cars were pulling up as groups appeared seemingly out of nowhere to volunteer for the search. After being directed by the sheriff to sign in and form groups that could be led to each different quadrant, led by an officer or FBI agent.

Aubrey, of course, got stuck with the high schoolers.

She sighed as Elle laughed at her misfortune, being led to their quadrant by one of the football players who introduced himself as Cory, the sheriff's son. He asked her a million questions about being a profiler, and some of the other kids chimed in, too. Aubrey was actually enjoying herself with these inquisitive, albeit a little flirty, high schoolers, and she continued to spend time with them after their search was done and they returned to home base.

They spent the next few hours at the station, finalizing their profile to give to the department. When they stood up in front of the officers around dinnertime that night, they had fine tuned it to a point.

"There are no official reports of Satanic ritualistic killings in the United States," Hotchner started off, taking a seat on one of the desks as he met the eyes of each person in the room. "There have been animal sacrifices, or human killings, but none ritualistic."

"Cults commonly kill, but never for rituals," Spencer continued. "For example, the Manson Family killed 9 people in the course of 4 days to start a race war, but their blood was never used to summon the gods or used as a sacrifice of any kind."

"We think this specific cult is led by a megalomaniac," Elle revealed. "He's charismatic, able to get people to follow him."

"You might recognize the signs of a cult through the way someone dresses, their behavior, or the kind of music they listen to. They usually listen to hard rock, screamo, that kind of stuff," Derek added.

"We're probably looking for a young man, perhaps even as young as a teenager. Most apparently, the person is a local. The terrain here is too difficult for someone who hasn't had years of experience and exploring to explore it and get out without getting lost," Aubrey finished off.

"You think one of my people did this?" The sheriff asked with anger.

"We do," Derek said, almost defiantly. Aubrey reached out and rested a hand on his back to calm him down. One of Derek's biggest pet peeves is when they offered their help to someone who obviously wanted nothing to do with them, or who didn't follow their requests.

"I know someone like that," the sheriff's son said, stepping forward. Aubrey looked at him in surprise for speaking up, trying to rack her brain for his name as it popped up: Cory.

"Can you give us a name?" Derek asked. Cory shifted, grimacing a little bit before he answered.

"His name is Mike Zizzo. He graduated about five years ago. He's in his twenties, but he still hangs out with high school kids. He's got a group of them that follow him everywhere. They smoke, listen to heavy metal. They call themselves the Lords of Destruction," Cory said in a drawl that implied he was not impressed with Mike Zizzo and his gang. Spencer sat up straighter.

"LOD!" He said excitedly, obviously elated to have finally figured out the mysterious acronym from the crime scene.

"Come with me," the sheriff said, hovering somewhere between dad and cop mode as he dragged his son to his office, letting in only one of his deputies and the whole BAU team. The sheriff slammed the door shut and turned to his son, almost looking betrayed. "Son, how do you know about this Zizzo kid?"

Cory looked unwilling to tell, but after a few moments of his father's stare, he broke. "I've been to the house where they hang out, drinking beers with them, but that's it. They're really radical. They claim that Lucifer was the one angel that knew what was up, that he should've been God."

The sheriff sighed. Gideon asked, "Where is this place?"

"On the other side of the mountain. It's the old Jensen place," Cory revealed, seeming very cooperative now. The sheriff sighed.

"That's out of my jurisdiction," he said.

"Not ours," Hotchner said, motioning to his team as they all got up and went to the SUVs they had driven into McAllister with. After they had buckled in and started to drive away, Aubrey looked back and saw Gideon standing as if they had left him.

"Hey, why is Gideon staying here?" She asked Hotchner.

"I don't know. He said he wanted to stay," Hotchner said, shrugging. "Sometimes, I figure it's better to let him do his own thing. He's got his own way of figuring things out."

Aubrey settled back into her seat, waiting in silence as she fought away sleep, listening to Derek and Hotchner talking back and forth about Satanic beliefs. Her eyes drooped several times throughout the short drive, but before she knew it, they were there, as proven by the blaring screamo music she could hear inside the house from inside the car. She exited, unholstering her gun as she followed in the other officers and her team members, keeping her gun raised as they entered the building and began accosting every person within.

When Derek came upon Zizzo, he was standing up on an altar, giving them a knowing smile that chilled Aubrey to her bone. Derek handcuffed him and pushed him back to one of the patrol cars, slamming the door shut behind him. Hotchner, Gideon, and Elle returned back to the station, leaving Spencer, Aubrey, and Derek with one of the deputies to look around some more, who left soon after to get some coffee from the station.

Aubrey, who was wide awake now, asked the guys, "Does anybody else think that was too easy?"

"I mean, I don't think he expected us to find his little Satanic cult hangout," Derek said.

"I'm being serious," Aubrey said, frowning at her boyfriend. "Something just doesn't feel right about this. Why would someone who cares so little about anything go to great lengths to follow someone deep into a forest just to kill them? I feel like they would sacrifice with convenience, not with specificities."

"Maybe their specific beliefs need more specific sacrifices," Derek said. Aubrey didn't argue, but looked over at the building with her eyebrows furrowed as she tried to work through any possible holes that had been created during the investigation, knowing that something was missing.

"I'm just going to go back inside for a little bit and poke around. Let me know when he gets back with the coffee," Aubrey said as she left the guys to look around. She got goosebumps as she took in the Satanic symbols and the red paint that reminded her so much of blood. Besides the graffiti and some trash, most of which were burned-out cigarette butts and beer bottles, Aubrey couldn't recognize anything that she found useful, so she left the barn, sighing in frustration.

The moment she walked out, an older car pulled up, almost screeching to a halt. Derek and Aubrey both rested their hands on their hips, watching warily as the driver's door opened and Cory Bridges popped out. Aubrey dropped her hand from her hip as she asked him, "Cory, what are you doing here?"

"Did you find her? Cherish?" Cory asked in an almost hyperactive manner, running past them as he opened the front door of the barn, peeking his head in.

"No, we found almost nothing," Derek said slowly, watching the kid.

"Did you check the outer house, too?" Derek, Spencer, and Aubrey looked at him blankly, and he groaned. "You didn't know there was an outer house. Come on, follow me."

Aubrey looked over at Derek warily as Cory took off. Spencer followed him, as did Aubrey and Derek eventually, but Aubrey made sure to comment to him, "Derek, this kid is weirding me out. He was probably at the station when they got there with Zizzo. He knew we didn't find anything here worth much. Why is he pretending like he doesn't know that?"

Derek looked over at the kid. "Maybe he wasn't there. Come on, let's go check the outer house."

Aubrey rested her hand on her hip again, ready to draw if she needed to. When Cory stopped walking, they looked up and found a wooden structure that looked almost like a worn down cabin in the middle of the woods, with a pentagram and the acronym LOD painted on the side.

"I'll go inside," Aubrey said, pulling out her flashlight. Derek rested a hand on her arm.

"The structure might be unstable, I'll go," he said, overly chivalrous as always. Aubrey shook her head, pushing him away gently both with anger at him for disbelieving her about Zizzo's innocence and her suspicions about Cory, and with frustration for patronizing her once again. "Aubrey, come on."

Aubrey had already jumped up to the porch, looking around carefully as Derek sighed, ready to follow his girlfriend in if danger presented itself. Aubrey moved in slowly, shining her flashlight around the only room as she finally found Cherish Hanson, dead and bleeding from the head, her eyes wide open as she rested on a bench by an open window.

Aubrey breathed out slowly, trying to compose herself as she exited. She shook her head at Derek, and Cory asked quickly, "Is she in there? Is she dead?"

"She's in there," was all Aubrey said. Cory put together the rest for himself as Derek lifted his cell phone, obviously trying to get service to call back to the station and report their findings. Aubrey couldn't hear Cory's soft exclamation as he realized Cherish was dead, but she saw him lean into Spencer a little bit. She rolled her eyes, still having her own suspicions regarding Cory.

Derek gave her a slight nod, and Aubrey caught on immediately: Derek was onboard with her idea of Cory being the UnSub. She tried not to smile as he said, "Reid, why don't you go up to the house and try to see if the deputy is there. We need to get back to the station so we can tell them that we found Cherish."

"Yeah, sure," Spencer said as he walked way.

"I'm going to go see if there's anything else I can find inside," Aubrey said, pointing her thumb over her shoulder. She said to Derek in a whisper loud enough for Cory to hear, "Help Cory cope."

She walked away and into the cabin, cocking her gun as she found a hole, aiming it for Cory's head in case he tried to jump Derek. She waited as Derek coaxed him, trying to get him to breakdown and admit his crimes. He was just about to when Spencer ambled back onto the scene, saying, "There was nobody up there, so I-"

Cory quickly took out a gun and grabbed Spencer around the neck, holding the gun to his head. Derek took out his own gun and pointed it at Cory, as Aubrey came out of the house, yielding her gun as well. Cory shouted at them, "I killed Cherish, I won't hesitate to kill your boy. Put the weapons down!"

Derek leant down and placed his gun on the ground, Aubrey following suit as she watched her boyfriend warily. He tried to bargain with Cory, promising him help if he spared Spencer, but both Derek and Aubrey could see the words were having no effect. Spencer obviously saw it as well, because he decided to take matters into his own hands.

He jabbed up with his elbow, hitting Cory in the jaw as Derek then tackled both Spencer and Cory, punching the latter in the face for good measure. Aubrey ran forward and pulled the safety on Cory's revolver, hearing the sirens pulling in. She smirked at Cory as Derek picked him off the ground, telling him, "Your dad's going to be so disappointed in you."

When the sheriff came to handcuff his own son, Aubrey felt a little sympathetic for the guy. The look on his face when he saw his son as a murderer for the first time was heartbreaking. For her, one of the hardest parts of the job was not dealing with death, but dealing with the aftermath of it and seeing how it affected others' lives.

Needless to say, the sheriff's expression haunted her. After trying for what felt like days to sleep on the plane ride home, Aubrey lifted her head up from Derek's shoulder to go and grab a glass of water, but when she looked into the back of the plane, she saw Spencer staring out. She got up slowly, careful not to bother Derek, as she circled around the couch and went over to Spencer, taking a seat beside him. She slipped a hand in his arm, surprising him as he jumped a bit and she whispered, "Hey."

"I'm guessing Morgan told you about my nightmares, too?" Spencer asked. Aubrey smiled.

"He didn't have to, Spence. Like I'm sure he and Hotch told you, we all have them." Aubrey put a hand on Spencer's back, rubbing it consolingly. "If you ever want to talk about them, just know I'm here with no judgmental looks or words, and definitely no profiling based off of only dreams. Half of them mean something, and the other half are nothing, just remember that."

"How do you get over them?" Spencer asked. Aubrey let her hand rest on his shoulder, looking over at Derek, who was still sound asleep. She smiled, and looked back over at Spencer.

"You remember the good things. You hold on to them, and you never let go," she said to him softly. He nodded, for once understanding something other than physics or philosophy. It was that moment in time that Aubrey could look down proudly at Spencer and his evolution, realizing that he was finally becoming a human being.

As she returned to her seat by Derek, she watched Spencer as he was finally lulled to sleep by the motions of the plane. She smiled, but the corners didn't reach her eyes as she thought of Cherish and her eyes that, even after death, screamed out 'Help me'. Aubrey felt herself shudder and she accidentally hit Derek, who awoke with bleary eyes. He smiled at her before asking, "Is something wrong?"

Aubrey looked at the guy who had already done more for her than any other guy had before in less than a year. For a moment, she wanted to tell him everything, to get her nightmares off her chest so easily like Spencer had. Derek blinked at her, waiting for her response, and she swallowed her secrets, telling him, "It's nothing."

As Derek went back to blissful sleep, his arm back around Aubrey, she bit her lip, knowing it would only be the first lie of many to come.


	13. The Angelic Complex

After a weekend spent visiting old college friends in Baltimore for one of their mutual friends' weddings, Aubrey headed back early Monday morning to Quantico, knowing she was probably going to end up late. Although she had gotten ready at her hotel room, she had forgotten her go back at home, and would have to swing by the FBI building to tell them as she had left her phone charger at home as well.

When she pulled into her parking lot, she sat in her car for a few more minutes, regretting having to go up to Gideon or Hotchner and asking for some more time, especially because they probably were about to get assigned a case they needed to leave for immediately. She sighed and got out of the car, thinking about possible ways to ease into it as she exited the elevator on the floor and walked over to her desk.

"Good morning, baby girl," Derek said as Aubrey sighed, putting her bag down at her desk as she walked over to where Derek was sitting at his. He frowned and said, "What's wrong? Was your weekend bad?"

"No, it was good. But I forgot my go back at my house, and my phone charger, so I had to come in just to tell them I have to go run and get it," Aubrey said, taking a seat on the edge of Derek's desk. He smiled at her, and she frowned. "Glad you're reveling in my pain."

"I'm not, but you better thank me now," Derek said mischievously. Aubrey's eyebrows furrowed.

"For what?" She asked as Derek leant over to the side of his desk and lifted Aubrey's duffle bag from her house. She gasped and leant over to kiss Derek, not caring who was watching, as she pulled away and said, "Oh, my God! Thank you, thank you, thank you. How'd you know?"

"Well, I was trying to call you, but it kept going to voicemail, so I figured your phone was probably dead. I used the extra key you gave me and got into your apartment to grab your charger for you which, by the way, is in the front pocket, and I saw your go bag, so I grabbed that, too," Derek said. Aubrey grinned at him, kissing him again.

"You are seriously a life saver, Der. Thank you," she said warmly as Hotchner motioned to them from the meeting room. Aubrey jumped up from the edge of Derek's desk, adding, "And just in time, too."

"All I know is that you owe me, big time," Derek said as he walked behind Aubrey.

"I know, I know. Your wish is my command whatnot," Aubrey said as Derek squeezed her sides. She pushed him away, laughing, as he pulled her closer to him for moment, pressing his lips against her ear.

"I've got a few things in mind," he whispered to her. She pushed away from him, laughing again.

"Keep it in your pants, Morgan," she warned him as he grinned boyishly at her, following her into the meeting room as he took the empty seat beside her. JJ and Hotchner were already waiting for them, and the rest of the team was present, so the moment that they sat down, JJ and Hotchner started with their presentation, talking about a town that hadn't had a homicide in 64 years that now had two within the last 48 hours. They went over basic victimology and had started profiling already when Gideon hobbled in on crutches, garnering the attention of everyone in the room.

"What happened to you?" Hotchner asked. Gideon moved slowly across the room, resting in his usual chair.

"I have a list of things I want to do before it gets too late. Skydiving is one of them, and apparently, it's all about the landing," Gideon said as he shuffled through some of the pictures of the crime scenes that JJ had copied and put on the table in front of them. Every one of the team members smirked or chuckled at Gideon's bad luck. He said, "I'll be out for a few days. Meanwhile this looks like blitz attacks."

"With a psychotic, we need to play along with his delusions, get him that way, but that's almost impossible to do. Delusions are very specific; any variation from the original, and the UnSub will know. We will have to get it down perfectly if we want to apprehend him that way," Hotchner said.

"I think we might have a clue," Spencer said as he shuffled through a set of the pictures, throwing them down in front of Gideon. "The bloody rings on the floor could be a signature."

"I'll see what I can do from here regarding that," Gideon said as he slid the pictures toward himself. "Although psychotics don't hide, which should make him easier to find, their dislike for hiding will also mean more kills, so you should move fast."

"Sounds good. Wheels up in fifteen," Hotchner said as they broke apart to go grab their bags and such. Derek and Aubrey grabbed their bags and drinks from the fridge before heading to the plane, taking their two normal seats by the table and next to each other. They spent most of the ride discussing potential connections between the two victims, but almost every idea fell short.

When they arrived at their destination, they headed straight from the air field to the crime scenes. Aubrey went with Spencer and Elle to the crime scene of the woman, while Hotchner went to the crime scene of the man.

When they arrived, a woman introduced herself as Deputy Jackie Long, quickly launching into everything that they needed to know about the woman: she was a known and well-loved member of society, who offered singing lessons to many, including one boy who had left shortly before her murder. Her son had walked the boy home and come back to find his mother on her piano, blood everywhere.

While Elle and Spencer discussed the possibility of there being two UnSubs, one of which was the psychotic and the other which was a druggie looking for more drugs, Aubrey took in the actual murder scene, noting the blood spatters and the music stand which the boy had stood shortly before his music teacher was murdered.

Aubrey squatted down behind the music stand, mimicking the height of an average 7-year-old boy. She looked out to where a crime scene unit had found a soda can, seeing the possible hideout spot of the UnSub very clearly.

The boy had seen the suspect.

She stood up at the same time Spencer ended his explanation to the sheriff regarding the fact that two men had been in the house. They had a junkie suspect as the sheriff left to go grab him for interrogation, but not before Aubrey made her findings clear about the boy having seen the suspect. Elle volunteered to go run to his house and question him about it, leaving Aubrey and Spencer alone at the crime scene with the other various crime scene unit members.

Hotchner called them back to the station after they arrested the junkie, and when Aubrey and Spencer walked in, they went up to Derek for an update. He shook his head and laughed as he said, "Most awkward arrest I'll ever have to make."

"Why's that?" Aubrey asked, leaning on the desk beside her boyfriend.

"Guy was in his soiled tighty-whities and I basically had to straddle him on the ground to get cuffs on him," Derek said, turning to his girlfriend as Spencer walked away to go find Elle. Derek frowned and said, "Kiss me and remind me that I'm taken?"

"You need to decontaminate before I touch you again. Lord knows how many germs there are on that guy," Aubrey said as Derek frowned and she laughed, pulling away from him as he tried to grab at her. He grinned at her but didn't chase her as she walked away, knowing it would be inappropriate and unprofessional especially considering they weren't in their own office building.

He followed her as they walked into the back part of the jail, where Hotchner was conducting an interrogation in the cell. Their suspect was wrapped up in a blanket, but from what Aubrey could see from his face, he was a hardcore tweaker. His eyes were swollen, his teeth yellow, his lips lined by sores, and his skin gaunt, showing how addicted he was.

Elle was questioning him about why he had the blood of the victim all over him. After finally admitting he saw a guy leaving the house just before he went into the house and stole the jewelry, Elle left. Aubrey, uncomfortable around drug addicts, remained quiet as Derek stepped toward the bars that were separating them from the suspect.

"Hey, Domino, come here," Derek said as Aubrey watched him curiously. The tweaker looked up at him just as curiously, with a little more fear mixed in. Derek said in his smooth, calming voice, "It's okay, Domino, I just want to talk to you. Come here."

Domino made his way over to him, and Derek asked him, "You didn't do this, did you?"

Domino was quick to shake his head, as Derek nodded. "Okay, then. You have to help us out here. Talk to me. You left, you saw him leave, and then what?"

"Well..." Domino said, snuffling as he cried and bristled. "You know, I needed money, real bad. She's already like that... you know, all cut up."

"She was all butchered up, and you robbed her anyway?" Derek asked, accusatory.

"It ain't right!" Domino shouted, throwing himself back down onto the bed as he trashed back and forth. Derek sighed, and Aubrey knew it was because with that regret, they knew that he wasn't the UnSub. Hotchner motioned to the sheriff and they both left the cell, followed by Derek and Aubrey who followed them back out to the hallway, leaving Domino shouting behind them, "It ain't right!"

"He didn't do," Hotchner said to the sheriff, whose eyebrows furrowed immediately.

"How do you know?" he asked them. Aubrey was the one to answer.

"The guilt he showed wouldn't be characteristic of our UnSub. Even if it was severely good acting, the fact that he remembered the crime scene so vividly, with no alterations that would signify delusions, means that he probably isn't our guy," Aubrey said as she slipped her gun back into her holster, following Derek and Hotchner out of the cell hallway and back into the main part of the station.

Spencer came up to them almost immediately, telling them, "Gideon figured out what the rings were there for. He thinks that the guy is taking the blood and the organs because he's a cannibal."

Derek blanched. "What?"

"A cannibal. Someone who consumes human blood or sk-"

"I don't think he was asking for a definition, Spencer, but thank you," Hotchner said, turning back to Derek and Aubrey, addressing Spencer as well. "This means we're ready to give the profile. Spencer, can you go grab Elle, please?"

Spencer nodded and walked away, fetching Elle as they collected the police department, giving them their profile.

"New developments prove that our UnSub participates in anthropophagi, which is better known as cannibalism. This means that he is consuming human skin, muscle, or blood, usually for a belief in immortality or to replenish what they may think is bad blood inside them. Not so surprisingly, few psychotics drink blood because they like the taste of it," Aubrey said.

"Anthropophagi signifies a level of severe psychosis and disorganization, so severe that the UnSub could not have traveled far from home. This means that he lives or has lived in this town before, that he's familiar with the area," Hotchner added.

"You've all seen him. He might be a neighbor, a friend, or a stranger you've seen but wouldn't recognize in a crowd of people. He hasn't always been a threat, but he is now," Derek said definitively.

"Part of his delusion is keeping him here. Something here means a lot to him. So, we're going to start back at Annie's house and spread out in quadrants. We will eliminate all of his hiding places," Hotchner said. "Also, we will go to Thomas' funeral today and look around. The UnSub may feel obliged to attend. Our analyst back in Quantico is running some records of people in the town that fit this profile, and we'll look into those people as well. Thank you."

They split up into groups as Hotchner pulled Derek and Aubrey aside, telling them, "I want you two to act like a mourning couple. They know the FBI is here, so they'll expect some presence, but I want you two to be in the crowd to analyze people while we grab license plate numbers."

"Got it," Aubrey said, looking down at her outfit. "Good thing we packed black."

They drove in FBI SUVs to the cemetery, joining the mourning party as they headed to the grave. Aubrey kept her arm through the crook of Derek's elbow, whispering to him, "I feel like I'm intruding on a very private moment for a lot of people."

"Just think- your intrusion may save one of their lives," Derek whispered back as they watched the service in respectful silence, studying the behaviors of those around them. Aubrey noticed JJ and Elle come up to Hotchner and present to him a few files, most likely of potential suspects. That proved to be a correct assumption as after the funeral, they headed straight to one of the suspects' house to question him based on a spotty record and a previous institution enrollment.

When they arrived with the sheriff at the house of suspect number one, a man named Oley Maynor who ruined his football career by getting arrested for biting the heads off of live chickens, they met his older brother, Jess Maynor, who was the local town butcher. After holding Jess at gunpoint in order to move past him into the freezer where Oley was hiding, they learned that Oley's institution time had been time well spent, as he seemed fairly sane and revealed he was still on his medication and wanted nothing more than to get out of the town he had hated from day one of his childhood.

After clearing his name, they received a call from the other sheriff revealing that there had been a murder and abduction involving the kid who had been taking music lessons from Annie Stewart. His grandmother had been brutally murdered and he had been taken about twenty five minutes ago by an UnSub driving his grandmother's now stolen car. They headed straight from the Maynor house and business to Wally Brisbane's grandma's house, taking in the scene of squad cars.

"There's no way it's Oley," Elle said, gesturing to the scene in front of them. "He's got a solid alibi. He was with us when this happened."

Aubrey sighed, heading inside as she headed straight to the laundry room with guidance from the officers. She, Hotchner, and Spencer entered the crime scene room only to see the poor grandma with her throat slashed and rib cages opened. Aubrey slipped on her latex gloves and leant over to investigate, prodding for what was missing from the body, since Annie Stewart had been missing her liver and stomach. Aubrey found her answer soon enough.

"He took the heart," Aubrey said, feeling a little piece of her own chip off as she pulled away from the body, exiting the room with Spencer and Hotchner right behind her. Derek gave her a look of concern, putting his arm around her waist as she shook her head, snapping off her gloves and tossing them into the trash. To answer his questioning look, she just repeated, "He took the heart. It's just sad, because if there's anything I feel like makes us different than animals, it's our brain and our heart. To have one of those be gone is horrible."

"Gideon," Hotchner said into his phone, bringing Aubrey back. Derek rubbed his hand up and down his girlfriend's back, consoling her as he listened to Hotchner's conversation with Gideon about their new find. Spencer, oblivious to Aubrey's slight dilemma, eagerly began participating in the conversation.

"While hearts are now re-shaped to configure a symbol of love, actual hearts have had a very thorough history and are considered one of the most sacred parts of a person's body. The ancient Egyptians used to clear out bodies of any organs except the heart, because they felt that symbolized eternal life and would make it easier to pass onto the next world," Spencer said.

"Something I read..." Gideon said on the other line, trailing off. They waited a few moments before they heard his voice again, loud and clear as he told them, "I read an article that said the liver, the stomach, and the heart are considered the three seats of the soul. Penelope sent you a picture of the bodies, and I think they almost look like angels."

"So, when he drinks their blood, he thinks he's encountering the divine," Spencer said, wincing as they all realized this meant that this UnSub would probably end up dying for his beliefs when they went to go arrest them.

Aubrey's phone rang as she pulled over to the side, answering it as the rest of them began discussing the inclusion of Wally Brisbane in a religious delusion specific to the UnSub's life. Aubrey had to plug one of her ears and go around the corner to really focus on the conversation she was about to have as she asked the unknown caller on the other line, "Hello?"

"Agent Bentley, I'm sorry to call your phone, but I'm heading over to the Stewart's house right now. David just called me and said he found a Tupperware container in his house that has blood and something else in it. He says it looks like a muscle, but he can't identify it. I know you and Dr. Reid specifically have training in biology, so I was wondering if one of you could come over and look?" Deputy Long asked.

"We're about done here, so we'll head on over," Aubrey promised her as she hung up the phone and headed over to her team, filling them in on the newest event. They headed over to the Stewart's house and both Spencer and Aubrey agreed that the muscle within was a stomach, most likely Annie Stewart's.

"Why would the UnSub do this?" The sheriff asked Spencer, Aubrey, and Hotchner.

"While some UnSubs might do this to show more control over the scene, I don't think that this is the case with this one. He is so disorganized and so a part of his delusion that he can't properly just leave it for no reason. So, our second and more likely option is that he's feeling remorse," Aubrey said honestly.

Hotchner seemed to light up as realization donned on his face. He said with an almost obvious tone, "And if he's feeling remorse and suffering from a religious delusion, where do you think he's going?"

Aubrey had the urge to crack a smile, feeling that they were finally making progress, as she asked the sheriff, "How many churches do you have in this town?"

"Sweetie, we're in the Bible Belt. We've got fifteen probably in this town," the sheriff said.

"Have your officers park out in front of every single one. We will go cover one and have the other half of our team cover another, but call in auxiliary units if you need them," Hotchner said as he got the addresses of two churches from the sheriff and they got into the car. He started driving them to one address as they texted Elle and Derek, who were still at the last crime scene, the address of the church closest to them.

Hotchner, Spencer, and Aubrey staked out their assigned church before Aubrey got a call from Derek telling them they had the guy and were bringing him back to the station. When they arrived, they could hear him screaming from the main room of the station, and as they walked back to the cell hallway, they saw him obviously having hallucinations in the cell.

"Who is he?" Hotchner asked, looking at the man.

"Eddie Mays," Derek answered, studying him thoroughly.

"Has he been like this the whole time?" Aubrey asked with concern. Derek nodded, looking worried.

"Even if he did it, he can totally use the insanity plea in court. Although with him, I think it's genuine, so I'm not so mad about it," Derek said as Eddie flew up and rushed toward Aubrey. Derek pulled her back quickly as his screaming escalated and he said, "I don't think he likes girls."

"I'll leave, I'll leave," Aubrey said as she exited the cells and went back to the main station, hearing Eddie's screams diminish only by a bit. Her phone rang almost immediately as she asked, "Hello?"

"Hello, sunshine," Penelope said. "I can't get a hold of anybody, so I thought I'd call you. I talked to Eddie Mays' college roommate, and he said that the guy had a weirdly over attached mother who called him three times a day and drove all the way up to Boston to break him up with a girlfriend that she didn't like. In rebellion of her, he partied like an 80s clubber with various drugs, including but not limited to LSD, crystal meth, and rock cocaine."

"Holy shit, I smoked weed in high school a few times and I thought that was intense," Aubrey said as she whistled and pulled a hand through her hair. "I'll send Spencer in to tell them.'

"Why can't you go?" Penelope asked.

"He has an issue with me, probably with all women that probably stems from his issues with his mother. Elle's not in there, either- she probably got kicked out earlier. I gotta go, I'll talk to you later," Aubrey said as she hung up the phone and sent Spencer back into the cell hallway to pass the news to Derek and Hotchner. She left to go phone up Mrs. Mays, getting her to the station. She, of course, was surprised to hear that her precious son had murdered a few people and abducted a child, but something about her was too calm, too knowing, and it threw Aubrey off.

Hotchner assigned Elle and Derek to go to Mrs. Mays house to investigate and see if Eddie had left anything behind at his mother's house, while Aubrey continued the interrogation with Mrs. Mays and got her to sign a medical release form so they could give Eddie a shot of some psychotic medicine that would help him calm down and cause him to become more lucid.

While she and Hotchner waited for Eddie's psychotic symptoms to subside, she got a call from Derek telling them that they had found red circles that matched those at the crime scenes on the floor under Mrs. Mays' fridge, and that the fridge itself smelled like bleach like someone had just scrubbed it. She told Hotchner, who then left straight for the cell with Spencer to question Eddie as he came more to. Aubrey stayed behind in fear that her feminine presence would set Eddie off.

When Hotchner exited, he had an almost confession but no news about where Wally could be found. He was discussing it with the sheriff in hushed tones when they heard the deputy shouting for help from the cells. They all rushed in, seeing Eddie had ripped off a piece of his jacket and was trying to hang himself with it. They got him down as Mrs. Mays rushed in, crying for her baby.

While Aubrey checked his vitals and stayed with him to make sure his breathing and blood pressure remained normal, Hotchner questioned Mrs. Mays and what she was willing to do in order to protect her son after he realized she was lying to him about something, and not only just the fact that her son had recently been released from an asylum. Aubrey walked right back out at the same time he did as Eddie had been placed in an ambulance and was on his way to the hospital.

"Well, we could check where she's been," Derek suggested.

"And how would we do that?" Elle asked. Derek looked at her, and she figured it out on her own. She looked like she wanted to slap herself in the forehead as she said, "Of course. Car GPS."

They seized the keys from Mrs. Mays and went outside, checking her GPS as they recognized that she had gone to the same spot six times in the same two hour period. Hotchner got her in an FBI SUV under the guise that they were going to visit Eddie in the hospital, and Aubrey climbed into the SUV with him as he kept the conversation light, talking to Mrs. Mays about her schooling in Virginia. The light conversation only carried for so long as Mrs. Mays recognized where they were, and began to freak out.

When they arrived at the abandoned house, Mrs. Mays tried to play innocent again as Hotchner, tired of her games, told her, "There are 12 patrol cars behind us with dogs. We will find this boy, and right now, it is in your best interest to help us."

Mrs. Mays obliged, leading them to a door that Aubrey opened, shining her flashlight inside to see Wally hiding in the corner, wrapped in a blanket. Aubrey put out her arms, cooing to him, "It's okay, sweetie. Come on outside."

She heard the sirens behind her as Wally rushed toward her, grabbing her and holding tight as he cried. She heard a woman yelling his name from behind her as Wally let go and rushed to his parents, being quickly escorted away by police officers. After finishing up some case work with the sheriff and deputy and gaining a contact at the hospital to keep them updated on Eddie, they headed off to the airfield and boarded their plane. While Aubrey usually could fall asleep right away when it was this late at night, she tossed and turned, and Derek noticed.

He turned to her and asked, "What's wrong?"

"I just feel bad for Eddie. His mom was crazy and it literally drove him crazy, and now he's going to spend the rest of his life in a hospital or in a jail," Aubrey said, cracking her fingers. Derek put his hand over hers so she would stop, and she frowned a little bit. "I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't feel sorry for them considering my job, but..."

"No, I get it," Derek said reassuringly. "You root for them, because you want them to be human."

"Exactly," Aubrey agreed. She sighed, and Derek leant over to kiss her.

"Don't worry about him. He will get the help he needs, in whatever form that may be," Derek said, going to sleep almost instantly. Aubrey continued to look out the window, just thinking calmly about the cases and moments in her past. She worried about a lot of different things, but her main concern was clear as she drifted off to sleep.

She needed to keep her own humanity intact.


	14. The First Diversion

When Aubrey walked into the BAU office that morning, it seemed nobody was there. She checked her watch and saw that while she was cutting it close to her usual 8AM arrival time on a normal day, there was no way every single one of her co-workers was late.

She walked over to the Round Table room, looking in as she saw everybody was already there, waiting on her. She saw a Quicktime file was pulled up on the computer screen, and she gave JJ an amused look while she took her normal seat next to Derek. "Movie morning?"

"Not exactly," JJ said as she played the clip, showing an interrogation of a father believed to have beat his son near to death with a tire iron. Aubrey winced as she watched the video, watching the father painfully and desperately beg for the officer to believe his innocence. When the clip ended, Hotchner turned to brief the group instead of JJ, who stood up to pass out the specific files for each person.

"This happened two days ago in Beachwood, New Jersey. Jack Fisher consumed LSD some time before the attack, but didn't go back down until 18 hours later," Hotchner said. Aubrey whistled.

"Is he a junkie?" When Hotchner shook his head, Aubrey looked at him in concern. "Most people don't take enough LSD for an 18 hour hit. Those who over use like that usually are just unaware of its side effects or were given a bad batch. Considering he knew he was spending the weekend with his son, a rarity, I doubt he intended to get high for that long and risk ruining the weekend and the relationship with his son in one swing."

"He's not the only one," JJ revealed. "The hospital has admitted six other people with LSD in their systems and bad reactions to it. They've had one death, and one patient go into a coma since admittance. They called the CDC, and the CDC called us."

Derek leant back, putting his arm on the back of Aubrey's chair. "What makes this a BAU case?"

"These people, as Aubrey suggested, were spiked. They received ten to twenty times more than the regular dosage a junkie would take when wanting an LSD hit," Hotchner said. Everybody's eyebrows shot up at that statistic, except coy Gideon, who shook his head.

"They weren't spiked," Gideon said as half the team looked at him curiously. He said to them, "They were poisoned."

"Unless this is a prank, which, by the sophistication of it, I'm going to guess it's not, there's a high change there's going to be a bigger attack, so we better get going," Hotchner said as he gathered up his files into his arms. "Wheels up in fifteen."

Everybody grabbed their go bags quickly, sensing the urgency more in normal in getting to the crime scene and nabbing the UnSub before he had a chance to poison more people. They were only on a short ride to New Jersey, so the moment the plane leveled out, JJ started her mini-presentation.

"The only death was 78-year-old Gail Norman. She ran out in front of car and was DOA," JJ said, throwing out a file onto the desk. Aubrey frowned at the picture; the woman reminded her of her own grandmas.

Hotchner threw down another case file, this one with a picture of a gauze-covered head in it. He told them, "We also have one in a coma. 9 year old Brittany Buchanan fell out of a treehouse and fractured her skull. They're not sure she'll ever come out of it."

"We need to issue a warning to press," Gideon said, half in his mind still as he studied the pictures.

JJ shook her head. "I think that could cause a panic. It wouldn't be wise to do so, they'll start getting inundated with people thinking they're poisoned, and they won't be able to respond properly to the real cases. I did notify the local PD to be discreet."

Derek sighed, dropping his file back onto the table. "How do these people have no idea how they were poisoned?"

"Nobody remembers what happened the day they were poisoned, and they were so messed up that local PD are having difficulty retracing their last steps," Hotchner said.

"So, let's look at precedent," Gideon said as he shifted in his seat. "There are four types of prisoners that target multiple types of victims."

"The true believer, a religious or political leader, usually of a cult," Hotchner said.

"The extortionist, who holds a business hostage in exchange for money," Derek said.

"The prankster, usually a young offender who doesn't mean any harm but usually ends up doing so anyway," Elle said.

"And the avenger," Aubrey said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat as her stomach turned over, telling her the one she was defining was the one she was dealing with. "He usually wants to fulfill a personal vendetta, and uses poison as his weapon."

"So, we need to figure out which one of these our UnSub is," Gideon said. "I suggest that we split up the victims and look at victimology to see what we can connect between them."

"I'll look at lab reports, see if there's any motive that can be seen through how he poisoned them," Spencer said.

"Aubrey," Hotchner said, gaining her attention, "I want you to come to the hospital with us, but stay there and be our contact there. If one of the victims comes to or thinks of something that will help us, I want you to be there both to take care of them physically and emotionally."

Aubrey nodded. "I understand."

When they nodded, Aubrey, Spencer, and Hotchner went straight to the hospital as they became acquainted with the staff there. Spencer and Hotchner left her soon enough to go follow a lead at a local restaurant one of the victims they had interviewed claimed that he had visited the same day he was poisoned. Aubrey was in the room of the last victim, the nine year old a coma patient, when she received a call from Hotchner.

"Come back with us to the station real quick. We want to regroup after the interrogation of Danny, one of the suspects," Hotchner said over the line. She looked over at Brittany, the nine year old girl whose vitals looked dismal. She sighed, and Hotchner asked, "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, I'm just reminded right now of why I didn't become a doctor after all. I'll meet up with you at the station in a little bit," Aubrey said as she hung up the phone and went downstairs to ride in with an officer Hotchner had sent to pick her up. She made small talk with him on the way in, and when she entered the interrogation room, Elle was already picking up speed with the Danny kid, talking to him about how his girlfriend claimed he beat her and raped her. He claimed that he only beat her to control her as she was high off of something, revealing he'd never give her LSD because it killed the mood.

"Kid is right about that," Derek said thoughtfully. Aubrey turned and looked at him, one eyebrow raised.

"You've taken acid right before getting with a girl? That's not appealing," Aubrey said as Derek rolled his eyes and she smirked at him. Even Hotchner had to let out a small chuckle at her hit on Derek. Aubrey finished Derek's thought by saying, "Why would he give her more than a date rape drug if his sole purpose was just to rape her? Why would he give her the LSD on top of that?"

"He wouldn't. He's not our guy," Hotchner said as he massaged his chin.

"The cafe was just a coincidence. But the two drugs... they're used for two different things. They want the LSD for the hallucinations and the rape date drug for amnesia, not to forget what happened during their hallucinations, but to forget how they were dosed," Gideon said, his voice slow and thoughtful.

"That means our killer's organized," Hotchner said, frowning. "He's covering his tracks. He's not a prankster."

"No businesses have been involved, so he's not an extortionist," Aubrey added, cracking her fingers nervously.

"And there's no cults in the area, so it's most likely not a true believer. Also, the victimology is all over the place, so even if there was a cult present, their victims would have some connection, and since they don't, probably not cult activity," Spencer said. Aubrey looked over at Hotchner and Gideon.

"So this means we're dealing with an avenger," Aubrey said, almost proud for having a preemptive feeling about what type of poisoner they were dealing with. Hotchner nodded to affirm her thoughts.

"We're ready to give a profile. Aubrey, you can go back to the hospital after we're done," Hotchner said as Aubrey nodded, Hotchner rapping on the window to gain Elle's attention as they released Danny from custody and gathered the police officers into the main station room, standing in front of them as Hotchner started, gaining the avid attention of their audience.

"We believe whoever started these poisonings did it as an act of revenge," Hotchner said, eyeing each officer as he spoke. "The seemingly randomness of the victims probably means the UnSub is a local, who targeted specific people within the community."

"Most of these avengers, as we call them, usually act alone, but he may have manipulated someone close to him. If this is a case, then he will dispose of them shortly after their use is deemed needless," Aubrey said, feeling her heart drop a little bit at the thought of another body surfacing or someone witless and spineless enough to aid a poisoner.

"He is likely a cautious, deliberate, and high-functioning male between the ages of 35 and 50," Derek said.

"LSD was chosen for a reason," Hotchner said, his words deadly serious as he paced a few steps, then stopped. "It alters perception. We think that the UnSub is acting out because he was incorrectly perceived, or believes he was incorrectly perceived. He thinks that these events will fix the unjust situation in his own alternate universe, the situation he feels that he needs to act in vengeance for."

"He's so self centered that he thinks his victims will know the reason for the attack, and who did it," Derek said, shaking his head. "This may be part of his delusion, an elevation of self worth that was destroyed by the event that he feels he has to fix."

"This UnSub was savvy enough to use a rape date drug to wipe their memories and obstruct our investigation," Spencer said. The detective sighed, obviously feeling wounded in his pride with this realization that the UnSub was one step ahead of them.

"Most importantly, as is the case with most poisoners except one sub group out of the four, this was a test run, also proven by the random victimology." Everybody in the room tensed, paying more attention to Aubrey as she told them, "None of these victims had any connection to the real issue at hand. The UnSub is trying to grab a foothold, see what his weapon will be. Now that he has one that does what he wants it to, you can expect another attack."

"Thank you, that's it for now," Hotchner said as they released everybody. Aubrey jumped into one of the officer's cars again as he drove her back up to the hospital, where she mostly just kept checking on the victim's lucidity until there was influx of people, most of them yelling at nurses.

"We've been poisoned! We went to the Red Cat over in the Beachwood area and we've been poisoned!" One woman shouted into Aubrey's face. She stared at her as a nurse pulled her away, and Aubrey pulled aside to one of the hallways, hearing more or the same from most of the victims.

"Hello?" Derek asked, sounding stressed.

"Are you guys getting 911 calls about poisonings? Because there was just a huge flood of people into the hospital and I don't know why," Aubrey said. Derek sighed.

"There was a leak, but they didn't name the restaurant. Now, everybody's thinking they got food poisoning or something from restaurants. Tell them to send everybody home who isn't complaining about hallucinations, because they're not our concern right now," Derek said.

"Yeah, okay," Aubrey said as she hung up the phone and walked away to give the directions to the floor nurse, who, after checking the symptoms and temperature of every self-proclaimed victim, sent almost all of them home spare a few who had come to the hospital for different reasons.

A nurse walked up to Aubrey and asked, "Excuse me, you're one of the FBI agents, right?"

"Yes, I am. I've also got a medical degree, but I don't practice much, if you need me for something like that," Aubrey said. The nurse frowned and nodded.

"A little bit of both would be good. My floor nurse told me to tell you we just admitted a patient who doesn't fit food poisoning or anything else everybody else is complaining about. She's barely breathing. I was wondering if you'd like to come take a look at her?" The nurse asked. Aubrey nodded vehemently, following her down the hallway and past the mayhem to a private room off the main corridor.

"Agent Bentley?" The doctor asked, putting out his hand. "I'm Doctor Johnson. Patient's name is Lynn Dempsey. She came in with complaints about nausea, labored breathing, and difficulty swallowing. Her words were slurred when she came in, and she could hardly control her legs. She says she can't remember how she became sick, or how long she's been sick. She's lost the ability to speak as well."

Aubrey walked over to Lynn, who looked at her with bloodshot eyes. "Tested for Rohypnol and LSD?"

"Yes, came back positive for Rohypnol and negative for LSD," the doctor said. Aubrey looked at her charts, her vitals, and her body as she turned back to the doctor, pulling him aside so she could have a chance to talk to him without being heard by Lynn, who she thought was too busy coughing to really hear what they were saying.

"You should test for some other biological agents. Our attacker we're looking for may have some higher-level attacks in mind," Aubrey said. The doctor went wide eyed as he nodded.

"I'll go off and do that right now," the doctor said as he left the room with Aubrey. While he rushed away to go order the tests, Aubrey pulled off to the side of the hallway as she called up Hotchner and filled him in on her new findings. He arrived within ten minutes with JJ and Spencer behind him, who immediately were updated by Aubrey as they watched Lynn Dempsey.

Aubrey was making sure her vitals stayed normal, sitting by Lynn's bedside with JJ to comfort her. Lynn's coughing had ceased, but she looked ten times more sickly than before, which Aubrey hadn't thought would be possible. She was just getting used to Lynn's new sickly pallor when the doctor walked in and said, "The tests came back."

"And?" Aubrey asked. The doctor looked grave.

"She's been infected with a version of botulism, for which there is currently no antitoxin," the doctor said. Aubrey stood up as Hotchner and Spencer re-entered, having heard the diagnosis. JJ kept Lynn comfortable, and Aubrey knew she probably couldn't even process what the doctor said.

"Botulism? That's like a cryptid disease. It's like the non-infectious version of TB. Everybody knows what it is, but few actually have it," Aubrey said as she sat back down in her chair, looking over at Lynn. "God, that poor woman's body is wrecked inside."

As if hearing the words, the body reacted violently. Aubrey and JJ backed away quickly, watching as Lynn's vitals dropped and the doctor and nurses tried to save her. Aubrey's heart tore as her heartline went flat despite their best efforts, and Aubrey couldn't help but blame herself for the harsh words she had spoken before Lynn had died.

JJ, Hotchner, and Spencer headed back to the station soon after, leaving Aubrey to conduct more victim interviews as they were slowly coming out of their hallucinations. She went into the room of the little boy who had almost been beating to death by his own father, and found his mother at his bedside.

She walked up to him and put out a hand, saying, "Hi, my name is Agent Aubrey Bentley. I'm with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. Would you like me to watch your boy? I've got a medical degree and awesome babysitter recommendations from my high school days."

The mother looked up at Aubrey, blinking her eyes as she smiled, processing her words. "That'd be great. I just need to sleep for a little bit..."

Aubrey nodded, taking a seat in the other chair in the room. "Take as long as you need."

The mother left the room, and Aubrey reached over to touch the boy's hand, playing with his fingers. She frowned as she looked at him, hoping to God that he'd wake up just as much as she hoped the little girl who broke her skull would wake up as well.

Her phone rang while the mother was still gone, providing a report from Derek that they had arrested a man named Edward Hill that had worked for the same company Lynn Dempsey had long ago. He had tried to develop a patent but Hitchcock, their company, had stolen his idea and then downsized him to get rid of him. Now, he was back for vengeance.

Derek left so he could help with the interview, and Aubrey hung up the phone just in time. The mother had returned, and she took her seat again as she looked over at Aubrey and gave her a smile. "Thank you. I was wondering, have you caught the man who did this to my son?"

Aubrey looked at her in surprise. "Your husband did this."

"He's my ex-husband, but I know that he didn't do this to our son," the mother said as she leant over and took ahold of her son's hand. "I know that someone affected my ex to do this, but Jack would never, ever do this to him."

"We're working on that, ma'am, I promise you," Aubrey said as she got up from the chair, knowing if the mother asked them if they had any suspects, she wouldn't be able to lie to her and she wasn't sure if the arrest was supposed to be under wraps. Aubrey headed for the door as she said to the mother, "If you need anything else, let me know."

The mother nodded as Aubrey exited and went to conduct yet another victim interview with someone who was still half on their high. She was just about to call Hotchner to ask if she could return back to the station with them when Derek ran in.

"What's wrong?" Aubrey asked him as he grabbed her hand, pulling her out.

"We've got a huge problem. The guy that we arrested told us that he poisoned the punch bowl at a party at Hitchcock. While he did that, his main goal was a retreat in the middle of the forest with the big wigs. We've got to get there before they die from the poison," Derek said as he and Aubrey ran to the car, getting in with Hotchner, Gideon, and Spencer as they drove toward the forest.

"So, we have no idea where they are?" Aubrey asked.

"We've got helicopters, state troopers, and local PD looking for them, plus us," Gideon said as he stretched his neck to look into every crook and cranny of the forest. There were dispatches over the radio, but nothing of interest for about ten minutes until they said the state troopers had found the campers at the edge of an access rode, giving the coordinates.

Hotchner pulled up and Aubrey bounced out immediately, shooting over to the ambulance as she slipped on medical gloves after flashing her credentials at an EMT. She grabbed the antitoxins and started administering them to the twenty or so executives that were strewn about the lawn in various stages of illness.

Within two hours, almost all of the men were sitting up normally again, a little sick to their stomach but no worse for wear otherwise. After validating everything with the local police station, they had a short plane ride home as they all distributed into the office, leaving one by one albeit quickly. Aubrey went to go grab something from Penelope, and when she came back, she and Derek were the only ones left in the pit. Hotchner was in his office, obviously and unsurprisingly immersed in his work.

"You going to pull another long night here?" Aubrey asked as she sat on the edge of Derek's desk, holding her bag. Obviously she herself was about to head home.

Derek sighed and nodded, throwing a case file down on top of his desk. "Unfortunately, they aren't going to do themselves. I'd rather do it all tonight and get some good sleep tomorrow rather than get spotty work and spotty sleep the next two days."

"I guess that's logical," Aubrey said, swinging her legs. "Doesn't mean I'll follow."

Derek laughed. "Like you ever do."

Aubrey grinned at him, and he looked up at her, thinking about her focus back in the hospital. He suddenly asked her, wondering what how his subconscious took ahold of his mouth so easily, "Why didn't you become a doctor after you graduated?"

Aubrey stared at him with surprise, and Derek apologized. She smiled and shook her head, saying, "No, it's alright, I just wasn't expecting you to say that. After I did clinicals and internships, I realized that as much as I wanted to help people, watching half of them die wasn't the way I wanted to do it. I had this long conversation with my dad, and he told me to join the FBI so I could protect people. I told him I didn't want a desk job, and he finally told me about his. Up until that point, I hadn't really known what he did, and when I found out about the BAU, I thought, that's what I wanted to do."

"So tell me, girl genius, why'd you go to college so soon and skip the last few years of high school?" Derek asked. Aubrey lost her playful attitude, and Derek almost questioned why, but he didn't have the chance as she answered quickly.

"High school wasn't a good time for me. I wanted to get out and get gone," Aubrey said, sounding like she was purposefully ignoring answering his question. His eyebrows furrowed.

"Why? Were you bullied?" Aubrey didn't answer, and Derek put a hand on her thigh. "Aubrey..."

She stood up, pushing her hand off his skin, almost as a reflex it seemed.

"Derek, stop," Aubrey said, sounding suddenly angry and a little fearful, too. Derek looked at her in surprise and confusion as she told him, "I'm not ready to talk about it. It's getting late, anyway. I need to head home. I have no intention to spend the night in the office again."

Derek knew if he prodded further, he could end up in a bad spot with Aubrey, so he let it go as he kissed her goodnight and watched her walk into the elevator. Although he hadn't verbally discussed it with her, her situation was still running rampant in his mind as he tried to push the pieces together.

What was she hiding from him?


	15. The Veteran

When Aubrey's phone rang at 2AM after her Saturday night, she knew it couldn't be anything good.

She rolled out of Derek's arms as she groaned, waking him up. She answered her cell phone and said, "I'm assuming this is Hotch, and if it is, this better be good. But if it's Penelope or JJ or Elle calling from a Saturday night fun run, I'll be seriously pissed."

"It's Hotch," Hotchner's phone rang from over the other end. Derek sat up in the bed, rubbing his eyes as the sheets slid down his bare torso. Even in her half-asleep state, Aubrey couldn't help but stare at the Roman god looks of her boyfriend. Hotchner's voice snapped her out of it as he said, "We need you guys to come in."

"Of course you do. You know, when I asked about this job, you told me we had weekends off?" Aubrey said as she stretched out of the bed. Derek moaned and followed suit, heading to the bathroom to take a shower before they headed out.

Hotchner said, literal as always, "I told you we had weekends off, but that we still worked emergency cases during that time."

"Isn't every case an emergency?" Aubrey said as she started getting out a new work outfit from her closet. After going out on a night on the town that included a romantic dinner and a night of dancing and drinking, Aubrey and Derek had gone back to her place since it was closest to the city. She noticed that some of Derek's clothes were beginning to collect in her closet, as sure as she was that some of hers were collecting in his.

"This one more than others. Max Ryan has called us in for a consult," Hotch said. Aubrey froze between shirts, developing a questioning look as if Hotchner were standing in front of her.

"Max Ryan? Like _the_ Max Ryan, author of the Keystone Killer book I pre-ordered?" Aubrey asked for clarification.

"One in the same, I suppose. Gideon went to his signing and the Keystone Killer made an appearance. It seems he's retired from dormancy and Ryan wants us working the case," Hotchner said. Aubrey nodded vehemently, picking out her best work outfit.

"We'll be there as soon as we can," Aubrey said as she packed a go bag and made a quick breakfast for her and Derek. The moment he was out of the shower, she flew in and got ready faster than Derek could ever make her. He looked at her in surprise when she exited, looking fresh and excited.

"What are you all energetic for?" He asked as Aubrey filled him in about Max Ryan. Unlike Aubrey, he didn't see the allure of an old profiler. Gideon had made more significant arrests than Max Ryan, but Aubrey didn't seem phased by his fame.

They drove up to the offices, walking right into the meeting room and seeing they were the last ones there, as usual. Gideon looked up from a file, getting the attention of the man behind him, who had turned when Aubrey and Derek had entered. Gideon cleared his throat, standing up to be the center of attention.

"Max Ryan, this is my team- Dr. Reid, Agents Morgan, Bentley, Greenaway, and Hotchner," Gideon said as he motioned between Ryan and the group. Ryan nodded slightly toward them, but then looked back at the screen. Gideon continued, "There's been some new activity in the Keynote Killer case."

"New activity? Meaning what?" Elle asked as she took one of the seats at the Round Table.

"Meaning he was at my book signing last night," Ryan said in his gruff voice, squeezing his fists at either side of his body. Derek's eyebrows raised quickly.

"He got away?" He asked in surprise.

"Would we have called you in if we got him?" Ryan asked, obviously lacking a patience. Derek's eyebrows rose in offense now as Aubrey gently pressed a hand to his back, hiding the gesture from Ryan. She wasn't sure, but she was willing to bet he was a very traditional FBI agent that believed inter-agency relationships should be taboo.

"He handed this letter to the security guard," Gideon said as he handed the word search puzzle and note to Spencer, who immediately began analyzing both.

"Two driver IDs were attached to it. One belonged to Amy Jennings, his last known victim," Ryan said as he clicked an image on the screen, opening up the picture of the ID as well as a separate picture of Amy. "She was strangled in 1987."

"What is the significance of black bra, and gray wool socks?" Spencer asked abruptly, looking up from the puzzle.

"That's what Amy Jennings was wearing when we found her all those years ago," Ryan said, sounding for a few moments like forlorn war veteran. Aubrey narrowed her eyes, not in any ill feelings, but in an attempt to get a more solid read of Ryan.

Derek said, almost sulkily, "That's a lot of detail to remember for twenty years."

"Some killers take mental or physical photographs, to relive the scene many times over, many years later. If he took physical photographs, that would explain the level of detail despite the UnSub's obvious increase in age," Hotchner explained.

"Second victim is Carla Bromwell. The police went to her apartment a few hours ago and found her suffocated with a plastic bag. No defensive wounds could be found," Gideon said.

"All in this puzzle... C Bromwell, rear window, no fight," Spencer said, still within the puzzle.

Derek straightened. "Wait, suffocated? His previous MO was strangulation. He hasn't been killing all this time, has he? It would've been difficult to connect it to him if the MO has been completely different."

"I would've known if he was active," Ryan said defensively. Derek and he shared a tense moment of staring before JJ walked in with her cup of coffee, interrupting the tension. She sighed and sat down at the round table, looking at Gideon.

"Gideon, turn on the news, please," she said as Gideon did as she asked, watching as the news report talked about receiving a picture of Carla Bromwell's dead body as well as receiving a letter at the station. Gideon sighed and shut off the TV once the report was done, and JJ commented, "Well, this UnSub certainly works fast."

"Meet you on the plane in 30 minutes," Hotchner said to the team. Ryan grabbed a bag from his feet, and Aubrey looked over curiously.

"You coming with us?" She asked politely enough. Ryan looked up at her, narrowing his eyes in judgement.

"I grew up thinking that if I wanted a job done, I should do it myself," Ryan said as he exited the room, obviously heading straight toward the plane. Aubrey stared after him in surprise of his bluntness, and Derek looked like he was ready to run after the guy and pummel him at Aubrey's word. She shook her head and walked to grab her go bag before joining everybody else on the plane.

After figuring out that Carla Bromwell's kill didn't fit the Keystone Killer's MO of strangulation nor of binding technique, they began to think of possible reasons why he would divert from his original signature.

"Maybe we have a copycat on our hands?" Derek asked.

"Someone who just happened to have Amy Jennings' ID?" Ryan scoffed, then picked up a file from the desk in front of Derek that Aubrey had been looking at. "I doubt it."

He walked back to the front of the plane, and Derek, Elle, and Hotchner watched him with surprise and annoyance. Derek took in a deep breath and Aubrey slipped her hand around his bicep, squeezing as she told him, "It's fine, Der."

"Gideon, how are we supposed to work with him?" Derek asked with clenched teeth. "He's not even an active agent. How are we legally able to allow him access to crime scenes and information?"

"He's a consult, Morgan," Gideon said. "He knows this case better than any of us. We are running the investigation, and he is just acting as a consult."

"Does he know that?" Derek asked dubiously. Aubrey quickly grabbed his arm, calming him down as they all spent the rest of the ride trying to ignore talking to Ryan and trying to cool down from all the stress that he had placed upon each of them. When they got off the plane, they all headed straight to the crime scene, each of them designated a certain part of the house.

Aubrey and Derek took the kitchen area, mostly because Aubrey knew Derek needed to let off a little more steam than everybody else. She knew Ryan would want his hands on the corpse, so she took the furthest thing from it.

When they entered the kitchen alone, Aubrey turned to Derek and said, "Okay, talk."

Derek looked over at her with both surprise and confusion. "Talk about what?"

"About your despise for Ryan." Derek looked at Aubrey blankly, and she inspected some items in the kitchen, noting some dirty dishes and other messes around the room. She continued without looking at him, "It's kinda obvious, Der."

"I don't despise him," Derek clarified. "I just don't particularly like him. He isn't professional and expects us to drop everything to do what he thinks should be done. Things have changed since he was part of the BAU, and we each have our own way of going about things. He should respect that."

"Like you said, things have changed. He's not used to it yet. Back when he was on the team, for one, it was all males, and only three of those were permanent positions. Just give him some time, Derek. He's stressed because this UnSub is making it personal. Wouldn't you do the same?" Aubrey asked as she looked up from the counter she had been expecting. Derek huffed, a sound of defeat as Aubrey smiled. "That's what I thought."

"Hey, guys, come with us to the bedroom," Spencer said, poking his head in through the door.

"Ooh, Spence, what are you suggesting?" Aubrey asked suggestively, so ridiculous that even Derek had to crack a smile. Spencer gave her a confused look as she laughed, putting a hand on his arm as she said, "Never mind, boy wonder. What you got?"

They entered the bedroom, the crime scene, as Hotchner announced to all of them. "We found a note over in the study."

"It includes a quote from your book," Spencer said, obviously eager to impress Ryan. Aubrey couldn't help but smirk at his attitude, and Spencer continued by saying, "Page 134, the quote from Sir Francis Bacon. 'In order for the light to shine so brightly, the dark..."

"When did you read the book?" Gideon cut him off.

"On the plane," Spencer answered almost obviously, as if he was surprised Gideon expected anything else.

"You read it on the plane and had time to memorize the page number and the quote?" Ryan asked, for the first time seeming begrudgingly impressed with the new team's abilities. Although the characteristic was only one Spencer presented, Ryan's mood toward the team was shifting.

"Don't ask," Derek said, chuckling as he did so. His mood had changed as well since discussing with Aubrey what bothered him about Ryan, and he was ready to move on.

"It says to expect another gift in two days," Hotchner said, bringing the attention back to the note. Elle perked up, looking at Hotchner with furrowed eyebrows.

"A gift?" She asked. It donned on her as she nodded her head and said, "The victims. But who are they gifts for? Himself?"

Ryan shook his head, answering, "For me."

"We're ready to give the profile," Hotchner said as they headed back to the station, rounding everybody up that the could to deliver the profile.

"It's been twenty years. Several things have changed, including both the ages of the Keystone Killer and of his victims. While most would attribute the change in victim age due to the change in UnSub age, this is usually not the case. UnSubs of this sort kill to fulfill a fantasy, a fantasy that should not change with increasing age," Hotchner said. "He once preferred young woman, but now he's switched to older."

"What does that mean?" The lead detective asked.

"This movement away from his prior fantasy may signal devolution." Aubrey allowed for the word to settle in the minds of every person around her, obviously setting off some internal alarms as she watched several of their eyes widen. She continued, "This means he could even devolve into a frenzy."

"We need to be prepared for whatever comes toward us," Derek added.

"If he's in a frenzy, there's no way to estimate how quickly he'll devolve, how quickly he'll kill, or how many bodies will pile up because of it," Hotchner said, shaking his head. "So, we're going to go everything we know, old and new, and hopefully we'll find something that we can use against him."

"We're going to start with Max Ryan's original profile. Max, you want to give it?" Gideon asked. Aubrey noticed something flash over his face, a sort of anger and frustration that she had seen on her father's face when she was younger and after they reconciled when she was older.

So, she wasn't that surprised when Max said "No" and walked away to the back room like a two year old throwing a tantrum.

Gideon walked out after Max, while Hotchner continued to give the profile quickly, obviously curious as to what was going on with Max. After he was done, they regrouped in the office the police department had so graciously offered them as workspace while Gideon returned and Ryan remained absent.

"So, what's different now?" Hotchner asked the group.

"He said there was no fight. So why hit her? To scare her? Show her who's in charge?" Derek mused.

"He never did that before," Hotchner said slowly, shaking his head. "He hit her over the back of her head not to scare her, but to knock her unconscious. To control her."

"He used flex cuffs, which are easier to use, even though the rope was part of his signature. A huge change like that, and a huge change in his MO with the strangulation versus the suffocation indicated that something else has changed within the UnSub," Gideon said thoughtfully.

"Hey, guys, I've got a name," Spencer said from the blown-up version of the new puzzle that had been posted on the work board. He circled it a few times for good measure as he told them, "Scott Harbin. He was one of the original suspects on Ryan's list."

"It's not him," a voice came from the doorway as they turned to see Ryan, who had obviously fully recovered from his hissy fit. "I interviewed him several times, and he went to jail in 88 anyway for stabbing a guy. He's a pedophile and a creep, nothing more."

"Did you not hear yourself just say 'he stabbed a guy'?" Aubrey asked in disbelief. Ryan gave her a look of barely disguised distaste as Aubrey bristled, stating defiantly, "I think that's a little up our alley."

"I'll go ask Garcia what she can get on the guy," Derek said as he got up from the table. Ryan slammed his hands onto the table, garnering the surprised attention of everybody around him. Even Gideon looked a little astonished at his behavior.

Ryan nearly yelled at Derek, "He's not our guy!"

Derek looked over at Hotchner for help, who nodded as Derek left despite Ryan's outburst to call Penelope. Ryan stormed out of the room, obviously furious with people not listening to what he had to say, and Hotchner looked over at Gideon, saying, "Does Ryan want to actually catch this killer, or does he just want to prove that he's right?"

"I think a little bit of both," Gideon said as Derek re-entered to the room.

"Our tech genius just informed me that Scott Harbin skipped his last parole appointment," Derek said as they all stood up, making their ways to the SUV to head over to Scott Harbin's. When they entered the house, Aubrey could see Scott running away from them through the kitchen. Elle yelled after him and leapt from one edge of the kitchen to the other, successfully pinning Scott down to the linoleum.

"Scott Harbin, you're under arrest," Ryan said from above him as Aubrey looked at Elle, impressed with her tackling of Scott.

"Ryan?" Scott said as he twisted underneath Elle and saw Ryan. He smirked and said, "Man, you got old."

"Didn't we all?" Ryan said as he nodded to Elle and she lead Scott to the family room to sit him on the sidelines as they searched his house. Derek, Hotchner, and Spencer moved upstairs to look about there, while Elle, Ryan, Gideon, and Aubrey stayed downstairs.

"He's severely obsessive compulsive," Aubrey said, looking through his neatly organized magazines. "Everything has it place, and there's not a speck of dust anywhere."

"Are you done yet?" Scott asked from the family room, obviously discomforted by watching the FBI tear apart his beautiful house limb by limb as they searched for any evidence to try him. Elle walked over to him, being confrontational with jackasses of guys like usual.

"You want me to be done, don't you?" She asked as Aubrey watched her in concern. Elle had a tendency to act out like this when something else was bothering her. Elle continued, "You want me to turn around so you can hit me on the back of the head, knock me unconscious, and kill me, because right now, you're horrified that I'm not terrified of you."

Elle walked away, and Ryan gave Gideon a look that almost told him to get Elle under control. Aubrey clenched her fists and her teeth as she walked over to Elle, watching Ryan move upstairs. She asked her gently, "Is everything okay?"

Elle, who looked up at her with her eyes flashing, allowed a few moments to pass between them so she could calm down. She nodded and said, "Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"

"That got a little heated with Scott," Aubrey said slowly, waiting for Elle to break and tell her everything. When she didn't, Aubrey sighed and said, "You're not the only one on the team that disagrees with Ryan being here. While he might be good to have as a consult, he'd be better if he wasn't doing field runs."

"I know!" Elle said, lighting up. Aubrey internally cheered; she knew that it was Ryan that had been bothering Elle. She leant back on the window and sighed, looking over at Aubrey and said, "I don't want to become Ryan one day."

Aubrey looked at Elle in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"He's so obsessed with the Keystone Killer, he's let it overrun his life. He retired because he couldn't get over it, he moved to the crime scene to be closer to it, he lost his family because he was too involved..." Elle trailed off when she saw Aubrey's surprised expression. "Oh yeah, his wife left with the kids after he became to obsessed. And like, I do want a normal life. I want to live this life, the BAU life, right now, but later on, I want a husband and kids and a white picket fence. And right now, it scares the shit out of me that even though I want the BAU life, Hotch can call me up on a Saturday night and I just go, with no strings attached."

Aubrey stared at Elle in realization of what she was saying, but she was bounced out of her reverie as a paramedic came rushing in with a stretcher. Aubrey and Elle quickly went on alert as Derek came down the stairs and told them they had found a victim wrapped up but still alive under Scott's bed.

After they carted out the newest victim, they headed out to the SUV, where Derek plucked a letter addressed to Ryan from underneath the windshield wiper. He cussed and handed it to Ryan, saying, "Looks like Scott's not our guy."

"What does this mean?" Elle asked.

"One killer led us to another," Gideon said, shrugging. "We know that they make the best profilers, because not only do they admire or remain fascinated with others' work, but they truly know what goes on inside their minds because they themselves have been through it."

Something clicked in Aubrey's mind. Hotchner looked over at her, recognizing her 'A-ha!' moment as he asked her, "What are you thinking?"

"I don't even really know what triggered this, maybe it was Gideon saying they've been through it... but looking at the change in MO, in victimology, in forced entries, in everything that has changed, could it be possible that he changed everything not by choice but by necessity?" The team looked over at her, interested in her mind path as she began to get more and more passionate about it. "With growing age comes growing disease and injuries as well as worsening sickness. Although he was young before, he isn't now- that's the difference. Something could've happened to him, and it's taken a few years for him to adjust, but now he's back, just weaker or disabled so he had to fix that."

"We need to update JJ," Hotchner said as he pulled away to call JJ to prepare another press conference.

They jumped into their cars, and as they were driving back to the station as Ryan turned toward Aubrey and said, "I think you're onto something, Bentley" before turning back around. Aubrey looked over at Derek in surprise with a smug little smirk as he scoffed and rolled his eyes.

When they returned to the station, Aubrey, Derek, Spencer, and Hotchner sat down immediately to begin spitballing once more. Although only three desks were offered, Derek took a seat on top of the one Aubrey was using as they all shuffled through old case files and reports on different ways to lose strength through accidents and diseases.

"I'm still thinking a stroke," Hotchner said as he threw his specific report back down onto the table.

"The thing is, in Ryan's original profile, the guy is in his 20s. Isn't that too young for a guy to have a stroke?" he asked mainly Aubrey, who had a medical background, but before Aubrey could even access that part of her brain, Spencer was off.

"Eighty percent of strokes are ischemic, and the other 20% are hemorrhagic, which usually leads to death. For the ischemic ones, plaque builds up in necessary arteries and causes blood clots," Spencer said. Derek stared at him, obviously comprehending little.

"But wouldn't it take time for that plaque to build up?" Derek asked as Spencer nodded. Derek rested back in his seat, smiling in pride to himself as he said, "So, obviously, the young guy probably didn't have a stroke."

"Did you know that stroke victims who participated in virtual gaming during their recovery came back healthier than those who didn't?" Spencer asked after obviously feeling inferior due to Derek's rejection of his idea. Derek rolled his eyes, and Aubrey punched him in the arm.

"If you have a stroke tomorrow, I just hope you know I won't sign you up for virtual gaming. Spence's advice tries to save your life, but you just won't let it," Aubrey said as Derek grinned and reached over to kiss Aubrey's cheek real quick before pulling back under Hotchner's fatherly stare.

Ryan walked out of the coffee room with Gideon and Aubrey quickly looked back down at her case file, fearful of what Ryan might do if he found out that she and Derek were a thing. After sifting through medical records for what seemed like days, they finally ruled out stroke victims and narrowed down onto accidents instead.

"He had a large, four door American-made sedan, or at least we profiled him that way," Ryan said, finally offering more than criticism as Derek, Spencer, and Aubrey looked up from their individual paper piles in surprise. "Maybe you could ask that tech girl of yours to run any accidents in 1988 with large four door sedans and pretty serious injuries?"

"I'll go do that," Derek said as he got up to call Penelope. Aubrey gave Ryan what she hoped was a friendly smile before returning back to her paper pile. She was thoroughly engrossed with accident reports when Derek walked back in only a few moments later, smirking.

"We've got our guy," Derek said as he began handing out a stack of papers he was holding. "Garcia found him through Ryan's search parameters. Walter Kern, age 48, he would have been 28 at the time of the original killings. He has a military background: ROTC in high school, 4 years in the Air Force. Medical records show he lost control of the right side of his body after a car accident severed some nerves in his spinal cord."

"He's been working up his strength since then, like Aubrey suggested," Gideon said.

"He's been a county worker, all various jobs that would allow him access into people's homes, including working for an alarm installation company with Scott Harbin," Hotchner said as he winced, obviously disgusted with the idea of the two of them swapping disgusting stories and fantasies during lunch time.

"We've got him," Ryan said, smiling for the first time since Aubrey had him. "We've finally got him."

"Let's go," Hotchner said as they rushed to the SUVs, storming the Kern household. When his oblivious wife answered the door and said Walter wasn't home and was at a community center, Hotchner and Elle left to check the community center lead while the rest of them searched the Kern land. Spencer, Ryan, and Gideon specifically went into Kern's dark room as they found his scrapbook of victims, realizing the women he was targeting now were the women he had targeted to kill before his accident but had never had the chance to.

They found the name of his last victim and quickly rushed over to her house, storming in with the SWAT team as they heard her screams come from upstairs. Aubrey seemed to sprint in front of everybody else as she ran up the stairs, storming into the bedroom as she hit Walter in the gut and Derek tackled him to the ground. She reached over and snatched the plastic bag off of the woman's head as Derek said, "I need handcuffs."

Aubrey turned to give him hers, but then she handed them to Ryan instead. He looked at her in surprise, and she nodded toward where Derek had Walter pinned down to the ground as she told Ryan, "You deserve this, more than anybody."

Ryan gave her a thankful look as he leant down to slip the handcuffs onto Walter's wrists, the man who had acted like his own personal devil for so long. Aubrey, meanwhile, turned and saw Gideon failing to console the woman, who obviously was having a bad reaction to another man trying to touch her.

"Hey, move over, Gideon," Aubrey said as she put her arms around the woman to console her. The woman clung to her, and Derek watched, impressed by Aubrey's innate ability to tell when a woman needed another woman to cope. Derek knew immediately the run-in with Walter had scarred the woman, and thus, her response to men had drastically changed.

They all walked outside and watched in silence as Walter was shipped off in a cop car, and they headed back to the airfield to head back home. Aubrey remained quiet most of the ride home, just thinking about what Elle had told her earlier about Ryan. Although he was normal and almost carefree on the way home now that his demon was put away, Aubrey knew her own wasn't it, and that concerned her.

Derek was too fascinated with Ryan's old stories of Gideon as a BAU rookie to really notice that Aubrey wasn't participating in the conversation as much as she usually would. They made their way back home after getting back to the office, heading to Aubrey's place once again as they turned on the TV and just laid on the couch. Derek thought Aubrey's quietness had been a sign of exhaustion, but as he saw her toss and turn in her arms in a sleepless manner, he became concerned.

"Hey," Derek finally said softly, muting the TV, "what's wrong?"

"Elle and I were talking yesterday, at the crime scene," Aubrey said slowly, picking at the blanket over her lap as she diverted her eyes away from Derek's. He felt his eyebrows furrow in curiosity as Aubrey, who was normally talkative to the point of abrasive, struggled to find the right words. "She was telling me all about how I guess Ryan's job made him leave his family behind, and she pointed out how when Hotch called us, we got out of bed and went to work willingly, because we had nothing else to do. I know this job is our lives, but... is this job really the only thing in our lives?"

"Of course not, baby," Derek said softly, rubbing his hand up and down her smooth thigh. She met his eyes finally and frowned as he kissed her forehead, pulling away. "Right now, it's too early for us to be worrying about families and that stuff. That comes a few years from now, and so now, we're building toward that, okay? And what's so bad about the BAU being our lives?"

"I know I'm a profiler, but I do not have a social deficit like Gideon and Spence do that keeps them as that profiler 100% of the time. I like to drink beer and go to football games and go clubbing with my boyfriend. I'm a human, and I don't want to be defined by my job," Aubrey said. Derek grinned at her "human" experiences, glad he was a part of all three, as Aubrey sighed, lying her head down on his chest. "I'm just tired, Der."

"Bree, you're a great profiler. You are so wonderful at what you do, that you do it 100% of the time. You are still, however, the most human out of all of us, and that won't ever change," Derek said, tipping up Aubrey's chin to kiss her. They kissed for a few more moments before Aubrey pulled away, sighing.

"I wish you would tell me," Aubrey said softly. Derek looked over at her curiously.

"You wish I would tell you what?" Derek asked, just as softly. She pressed her lips together, studying his face. He could tell her mind was running at full speed, trying to analyze him. She shook her head, as if telling herself her assumptions were wrong, and then sighed.

"Everything. Anything," Aubrey said. He turned more toward her and put his arm around her shoulders. She placed her head on his shoulder, hiding her face in his chest as he rubbed her back. She laughed a little bit as she said, "I understand you don't want to tell me, and that's fine, everyone's entitled to their secrets. I'm just upset that the one person I want to know the most about, is the one person I can't figure out."

"That's what makes me interesting to you, Bree. I don't think we could be in a relationship if you could figure me out this easily. The mystery intrigues you," Derek said, tipping up her chin and kissing her. Aubrey swung her leg around so she straddled Derek's waist, her hands cradling his head as his hands slid down the back of her jeans.

She leant forward, still holding his neck with one of her hands, as she pressed her lips to his ear and whispered as sexually as she could, "Not even one little secret?"

"Not a chance," Derek whispered back to her. Aubrey pulled away from him and glared at him, but Derek just grinned and turned her so he could pin her to the couch. He shot down to kiss her again, then pulled away so they could both take their shirts off. His lips traveled to Aubrey's shoulder as she breathed heavily, cussing.

"Derek, I hate you," she told him, before he leant up to kiss her again. He was met with no resistance.

"Your lips really contradict themselves, baby," Derek said to her. She put her hands on his chest to stop him from diving in again, and he laughed. "Really, Aubrey?"

"Okay, so I don't hate you, but I do hate the fact that you won't open up," Aubrey said. Derek laughed again this time, more annoyed than anything else. He turned his head to the side as he sat up, and Aubrey sat up with him, quick to pull his gaze back to hers. "Derek. Please."

"There are a few things I've pushed into the dark a long time ago that aren't ready to come to the light. I thought you, of all people, would respect that," Derek said, slipping his shirt back on as he headed to the bedroom. Aubrey followed, still shirtless.

"I do, Der. It's just that, I told you where most of my scars came from. I only thought you'd do the same."

Derek wasn't sure what made him do it. Maybe it was the years of growing up in the Chicago streets, where words worked almost as well as weapons in protecting yourself against anything and everything that could hurt you. But Derek, who was slipping on his running shoes, commented snidely without even looking at Aubrey, "That's because we all already know what happened to you. Your real parents ditched you, you found your real dad later on who happened to be killed in a bombing, and your foster parents love you unconditionally. You've had such a hard life."

Derek looked up from his shoes to see a shocked Aubrey standing in the doorway. Tears began filling up her eyes as Derek got up and pushed past her, saying, "I'm going for a run."

Derek grabbed his phone and armband from the countertop before he ran out the door, trying to forget about everything in his past. He ran until he couldn't outrun it anymore, and broke down on the side of his and Aubrey's favorite running trail. When he took a seat on the bench and began sobbing, hiding his face in his hands with his elbows resting on his knees, he half-expected Aubrey to place a hand in his thigh consolingly, but then realized with a jolt what he had done.

He took off, racing, toward the apartment, nearly knocking over twenty different people on the way. He took the stairs up rather than the elevator, knowing he couldn't stand still for that long period of time. He rushed to the apartment door, and when he opened it, he found all of Aubrey's stuff gone from the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom, and the bathroom.

Aubrey was long gone.


	16. The Rebound

Coldness washed over Aubrey when she woke up the next morning. Not only had her slow AC finally kicked in, but so had the realization that Derek was no longer cuddled up to her. She sighed and held her pillow tight to her chest, squeezing her eyes shut before opening them only to spy the time- 4 AM.

Her own apartment had become a spectral building to her. When she looked around the room, she found Derek dancing with her, kissing her, holding her all during special memories they had shared. She shut her eyes tight again, but the images continued, and she lay, restless, back onto the bed, falling into some form of slumber.

When she woke up again, it was 7AM and she bounced out of bed as fast as she could, throwing her hair up into a ponytail as she slipped on some business clothes and ran out the door, racing toward the Bureau as fast as she could in Virginia rush hour traffic. She raced in her heels toward the door, cussing all the while, until she finally made it to the elevator.

"Shit, shit, shit, I'm late!" Aubrey cussed as she nearly slid into it. A leather jacketed figure with shaggy blonde hair in the corner looked at her with an entertained smile as she struggled to get her papers in order, continuing to cuss. She dropped a few papers and he gratefully picked them up, handing them back to her. She beamed at him, even more so when she saw his rugged features, and said flirtatiously, "Well, thanks, tall, dark, and handsome."

He laughed. "My name's Sean. And it was my pleasure."

"Aubrey," she said smoothly, putting out her hand and smiling again, less eager this time. He shook her hand politely, and she gave him an up-down. "You don't look like an agent."

"That's probably because I'm not. I'm a chef from New York... or at least, I am now." The elevator doors opened to the garage as Aubrey smiled, looking at him curiously. He smiled back and said, "It's a long story. Perhaps you'd like to hear it over dinner some time?"

Aubrey was already flushed and frantic from her hectic morning, and now there was a guy asking her out not two days after her big fall out with Derek? She struggled for the words to say, then settled on nodding as the guy wrote his phone number down on the edge of her case folder. Aubrey knew Hotchner was going to kill her for that later.

"Let me know," Sean said, smiling and winking at her as he walked out. "It was nice to meet you."

The doors shut and Aubrey couldn't help but gawk at her good fortune. She was in high spirits for the first time since Derek's harsh words had floored her, and everybody within the BAU office noticed. JJ sided up next to her almost immediately, saying, "Wow, what's got you in a good mood, despite the fact that you probably got extra sleep due to how late you are?"

"Sorry," Aubrey said, not truly apologetic as she added, "but I met the most gorgeous man in the elevator and he asked me out to dinner!"

JJ laughed and shook her head. "You sure know how to rebound."

"Wow, did you miss it," Penelope sighed as Aubrey got to her desk. Penelope melodramatically leaned against Aubrey's desk, putting her hand over her heart and looking as if she were about to faint. JJ rolled her eyes, but grinned at Penelope's show. "Hotch's brother just came in and can you say gorgeous!"

"Guess the building must be crawling with attractive men today," Aubrey said with a smile. Penelope looked at her curiously, but smiled as well.

"I can see you had an encounter with one," Penelope said.

"Aubrey, glad you could join us," Hotchner said from the meeting room's door. "Care to come up here, all three of you?"

"Dish to me later," Penelope said as she, Aubrey, and JJ made their way up to where the guys and Elle were waiting on them. Aubrey slid the case files she had been looking over for Hotchner, and he thanked her and picked the first one up, studying it.

"Is something wrong?" Aubrey asked, thinking she had gotten coffee on the file or something.

"Why do you have my brother's phone number on this case file?" Hotchner asked in genuine confusion. Aubrey paled.

"Your brother?" Aubrey asked, nearly devastated. She wasn't sure she could go out with a Hotchner, even though he seemed nothing like her boss. JJ, on the other hand, found the whole situation quite humorous; she failed at stifling a laugh, and Hotchner whirled toward her for an explanation.

"Can you tell me what's so entertaining about this?" Hotchner asked. Aubrey kept her back to Derek.

"Your brother totally just asked out Aubrey on a date, and she said yes," JJ said, still chuckling. Hotchner's jaw legitimately fell to the floor as he turned toward Aubrey, who put out her hands defensively.

"I didn't know he was your brother! He just said his name was Sean. You know, you two look nothing alike," Aubrey said quickly. Hotchner stared at her and she swallowed, worried she had somehow offended him, but he finally shook his head and cleared his throat.

"You know what? Go on this date with him. He needs someone to set him straight and send him off to Georgetown for law school rather than allowing him to go work as a chef in New York," Hotchner said as he began going into his speech about their case for the week. Aubrey's eyes flitted over to a surprise and outraged Derek, who had obviously expected Hotchner to stop the courtship in its tracks.

So it was with that jealousy she saw on Derek's face that Aubrey saved Sean Hotchner's phone into her number while his elder brother wasn't looking and Derek was. She didn't make eye contact with him as JJ went on to give them their case: a potential cult killing in Terra Mesa, New Mexico that left several college students dead in a seemingly ritualistic manner.

When they were released to grab their go bags and prepare for their trip, Aubrey could see Derek watching her, probably judging whether or not he had a right to comment on her new relationship with Sean, as it seemed everybody else was already doing so. Penelope followed her around like a fangirl to a teeny bopper until they left for the tar mac, trying to pump her for information that hadn't even been created yet.

When they arrived in Terra Mesa, Aubrey was chosen by Hotchner to go with him, Spencer, and Gideon to the crime scene, where she canvassed the areas and took a page out of Derek's playbook by putting herself in the shoes of the apparently missing 6th and female member of the group that had partied in the abandon house the night before. After deciding there was not much she could get, Aubrey returned with Hotchner, Spencer, and Gideon to the station, where Aubrey looked over case files of reservation members that had bleak pasts as well as whites within the community that had some personal vendetta with the Native Americans around them.

Aubrey was lost in her own little world of rap sheets and history when Hotchner finally tapped her on the shoulder. She bounced out of it and he asked her, "How long have you been staring at those files?"

"Hotch," she said, rubbing her eyes for emphasis, "I honestly don't even know. These are all just little petty crimes, for the most part, but I've been interspersing it with some heavy reading on Apache culture and whatnot and I just hit major research mode and..."

"Stop. Breathe," Hotchner said to her, grabbing her shoulder. "You're coming with us to the crime scene. You need a change of scenery."

"I don't know if I can stomach the bloody pike again and the eeriness of the closed house," Aubrey said honestly, holding her stomach with one hand as she snatched her phone off the desk with her other. "I haven't had anything to eat today, Hotch. Blood on an empty stomach does not bode well."

"We're going to the new crime scene. One of the white activists and his family were killed by the cult last night." Aubrey blinked at him, and he put his arm on her shoulder to guide her out of her daze. "We have a lot to catch you up on, apparently. We'll get you some food on the way, too."

As Aubrey scarfed down some fast food, Spencer explained to her in exrutiating and spastic detail what had happened since she had delved into the files. Ingrid had apparently been kidnapped by her own father as a way to set her straight post-joining-a-cult, the same cult of which was now killing people off. Although Ingrid hadn't been present at the last killing, they expected her to be of no help in giving up the loyalty to her cult, as she spoke in terms of a prisoner of war as well as in a sort of coded language that none of them could truly understand.

When Aubrey arrived at the new crime scene, she experienced first-hand this new type of language as Ingrid obviously struggled to talk to their Native American aide, John Blackwolf, without giving too much away. Mention was made of a Grandfather and a desert, but the rest remained as vague to Aubrey as most normal Native American parables and such did. John, on the other hand, seemed to be able to translate Ingrid's words easily enough, and they soon figured out where her Grandfather, the cult leader, was staying.

Heading to the Deadlands with John and Hotchner, Aubrey once again hit research mode as she questioned John with everything she could come up with, wanting to know more about the Apache culture and how it dealt with the cult that was doing the killings. Despite asking all the right questions, nothing John answered with really stuck out at Aubrey as to why someone would wish to use the Apache culture as a scapegoat for killings.

When they arrived at the deserted motel in the middle of the Deadlands, it seemed the cult had already vacated, leaving their leader behind who surrendered easily. When asked where his followers were, he offered an answer that chilled Aubrey to her core: "Hunting."

After using a few choice words to basically put the psycho in his place, John stormed out of the motel, obviously disgusted with these insane teenagers using his culture to justify their killings. Aubrey and Hotchner ran out with him, offering to give him a ride back to the reservation so they felt his presence was no longer required, due to it being a race issue and not a religious issue. The cult didn't honestly believe in the ways of the Apache, and thus, they could be handled by non-Apache.

But the moment they made it onto the reservation, Hotchner received a frantic call from Spencer that they figured out that the cult was going to attack the reservation next, as they saw the pattern in the cult's attempt to start a race war between the Apache and the whites. They raced into the school, noting that the cult liked to kill children, and evacuated them into the tunnels beneath the school. When Aubrey reached for her gun to defend, John put a hand on her arm.

"No, no, we don't do it that way here," he said, handing her a knife. She stared at it and he asked her, "Have you never fought with a knife before?"

"I have," she admitted, shaking her hand as she handed him back the knife, "but I've also been fought against with a knife. Guns are impersonal, I can do that. But to feel the resistance of the skin under my hand... I couldn't. I'll go fist-to-fist if silence is what you need."

John gave her a judging look, pressing his lips together firmly before nodding once. "Very well. Fist-to-fist it is for you."

Hotchner looked a little concerned, but didn't say anything as they heard the doors to the school above open and a man giving directions to what they assumed was the cult. John nodded at Hotchner and Aubrey as they split up, remaining quiet as the thugs walked around, eventually running into one of them. Aubrey kept her breathing to a minimum as she brought down the cult members silently, knocking them unconscious against whatever hard surface she could find.

Within ten minutes, every one of the cult members except one had been captured and tied up, carried to the front steps outside to present to the police as they arrived, trailed by the black SUVs that came to an abrupt halt. The driver's door of one flew open, and Aubrey wasn't surprised to see who exited.

"Are you all okay?" Derek asked, rushing out of the SUV as he took in the three of them looking dead-beat tired on the steps with the tied-up cult members. Mostly, his eyes remained on Aubrey, but she looked back at one of the cult members behind her to distract herself. She could feel John's eyes on her, too, probably trying to gauge Derek and Aubrey's relationship with his old wisdom.

"We're fine," Hotchner said, getting up from the steps. "We've just got to get back. Someone has a date to go to."

Derek blinked in surprise, and when Aubrey stood, she didn't make eye contact with him although she could feel his eyes follow her to the SUV. Elle whistled, appreciating the tension, and Hotchner made sure he guided Derek to a different SUV before joining Elle and Aubrey in theirs.

They made it back to the tar mac in record time, and Aubrey changed into her date clothes in the bathroom of the plane. When they landed, she was out the door before Elle could even finish the compliment of her dress. Derek was left in the plane, watching her leave for a date that wasn't with him, and it devastated him.

The next morning, bets were made amongst the girls of the BAU team on several things: what had happened on Aubrey's date, what Derek would do about it, and how they would interact now that they were officially seeing other people. It was a slow day in the office, which meant they had no case and had even more time to watch Derek and Aubrey's potentially awkward encounters.

When Aubrey came in and Penelope tried to pump her for information on her date, she remained mum on all but one fact: she was going out on another one tonight. Derek overheard and left the room as fast as he could, obviously not wanting to hear about it. Aubrey pretended she hadn't even noticed he was there.

Hotchner called her in when the day was coming to a close, after hours upon hours of paperwork and case files that drove Aubrey crazy. When she walked in, she was surprised to have Hotchner ask her, "So, how'd last night go?"

"I told your brother that he needs to remain as a chef in New York." Hotchner sighed, and Aubrey reached over, grabbing him by the arm. "Aaron, listen to me. I don't know your brother that well, and I won't pretend to, either. I got a pretty good vibe from just profiling him like I can't help but do, and he seems so genuinely happy in his place. When he talked about Georgetown, it felt... forced. It was the same voice I used when I talked about med school. Isn't happiness all you want for your brother?"

Hotchner looked over at Aubrey, and she nodded, taking his silence as she wanted. She let go of his arm and said, "He works at the Chate on 36th. I'm going to meet him after his shift ends at 9 for dinner. Please, please, please go and try and patch things up."

Aubrey left Hotchner in his office, walking straight out and brushing straight past Derek without a word. He looked like he wanted to say something to her, but decided against it at the last minute and pulled away. Aubrey could swear she could see Penelope sulkily slipping JJ a five dollar bill, probably betting on how long the two ex-lovers could go on for without talking to each other.

She exited the building and rushed home, getting ready before taking a train into New York to meet up with Sean. However, when she got there, she saw she wasn't the only one who was making the visit.

A huge smile crossed over her face as she noticed Aaron was sitting across the bar from his brother, laughing with him and eating some sort of delicious dish that made Aubrey's stomach growl. She cleared her throat, and the two brothers looked up.

"Hey, Sean, you ready?" Aubrey asked. Sean grinned and nodded, then leaned across the bar to kiss her on the cheek.

"Just a moment, beautiful," Sean said as he returned to the back to get his coat. Aubrey sat down next to Hotchner, and he just looked over and laughed, shaking his head.

"It amazes me how you are right, all the time," Hotchner said. Aubrey grinned and he admitted, "Listening to you was one of my better moves. I've patched the semi-broken relationship I've had with my brother for years, and nothing's ever felt this good."

"I'm here to help, Hotch. I've been telling you that since day one," Aubrey promised him, kissing him on the cheek as Sean exited from the back. Aubrey pulled away from Hotchner, slipping her hand into Sean's as she told Aaron, "I'll see you tomorrow, Hotch."

"Good night, Aubrey. And thank you," Aaron said as Aubrey pulled Sean out of the diner. When they were safely outside, Sean turned to her curiously.

"What was my brother thanking you for?" Sean asked. Aubrey looked past Sean and back into the diner, where she saw Hotchner was now sitting with his shoulders a little bit higher, just a little of the weight taken off. She figured it was time she do the same for herself.

She smiled to herself, leaning up to kiss Sean on the cheek as she said, "For deciding to let you down nicely. I'm sorry, Sean, but I don't think this is going to work out, but it has nothing to do with you."

Sean laughed, harshly. "Right. It never does."

"I'm serious. I was wrong to start this new relationship or whatever..." Aubrey trailed off, and Sean nodded, realizing where her thoughts were going.

"There's someone else. Or, actually, I'm the someone else," Sean said, laughing harshly again as he pulled a hand through his hair. "Seriously, Bree?"

"I'm sorry, I really am," Aubrey said, sighing. "I thought if I went out with you, I'd be able to see past it, but I can't, and I apologize. You're a wonderful guy, Sean, honestly, and the fact that you're going for your dreams right now is amazing."

Sean settled for a few moments, and Aubrey watched him warily. He gave her a look and said, "I can't be too mad at you. You brought me my brother back."

Aubrey returned his slightly forgiving expression with a small, yet immensely grateful, smile. He leant down to kiss her on the cheek again as he pulled away, looking at her inquisitively. He laughed and said, "Wow, you must really love the guy."

Aubrey bit her lip. "I think I might."

"Then go get him," Sean said. Aubrey stared at him, uncomprehending, as if he had just spoken another language to her, and he laughed. "Aubrey, as short-lived as this was, you pushed me toward New York, and I needed that push especially after Aaron pulled, hard. I'm going to push you toward this, whomever he may be, unless he's abusive."

Aubrey laughed. "No, no, I don't think that's an issue."

Sean eased back into his comfortable smiling, saying, "Then I think you should go to him. Now.'

"Well, thank you, sage of romance," Aubrey said with a curtsey as Sean laughed and bowed toward her, gentlemanly. "I think it is time for me to return to my Neverland of Virginia. Thank you for the enchanting, albeit short, time we had together."

"Perhaps I will see you in New York again?" Sean asked. Aubrey smiled.

"Of course. Goodbye, Sean," Aubrey said as she kissed him on the cheek one last time and practically ran to the train station, grabbing the first she could back to DC. When she arrived at the station in DC, she rushed to her car and sped all the way to Derek's apartment complex, getting out of her car in the parking garage and taking a deep breath as she realized what she was about to do. A huge smile broke out onto her face as goosebumps jumped to her skin, all in just the thought of it.

She took not two steps forward when she heard a familiar laugh that rose the hairs on her arms even higher, and made the corners of her mouth stretch even wider. She took in a lungful of air to shout his name, not caring who heard, when she heard a feminine laugh accompany his own.

Aubrey quickly shut her mouth and looked over to the elevators, where their laughing stopped only to be interrupted by the sound of two mouths against each other. Aubrey turned around the corner and looked up only to see Derek's lips on some girl's she didn't know.

The elevators door closed, leaving Aubrey by herself.


	17. The Big Reveal

To say the next day was awkward for Aubrey would've been an understatement.

What blew her mind was the fact that the day after they broke up hadn't even been this awkward, but that was probably due to the fact that both of them were aware of what had happened. Derek was unaware of both the fact that Aubrey saw him with another girl and didn't know Aubrey had come back for him.

The day only got more awkward when Hotchner sidled up next to her desk, whispering, "Why did you break up with my brother?"

As if sensing it would be the most perfectly horrible time for him to arrive, Aubrey spotted Derek over Hotchner's shoulder, waltzing out of the elevators and walking toward his desk, which was within earshot of Hotchner. There was a smile on his face, and Aubrey knew why, and it broke her heart. So, instead of conjuring the energy to lie to Hotchner's face, she told him, unbarred, "I broke up with Sean because we just weren't meant to work."

Derek turned to stare at her, bringing her only a bit of pleasure when she saw his wide, surprised eyes. "You and Sean broke up?"

She nodded, and Hotchner brought her attention back to him as he told her, "Well, my brother seemed just a little devastated about it. He said he understood, but that it didn't make it any easier."

Aubrey winced. "I never said it did. Do we have a case, or... ?"

"Yes, we do," JJ said as she slid up, acting as Aubrey's saving grace. "Hotch, stop harassing the poor girl and go gather everyone up, please. I'll meet you all in the meeting room."

Hotchner and JJ went their separate ways as Aubrey turned back to her computer screen and placed her head in her hands. She had almost forgotten Derek was there until he asked carefully, "Is everything okay? Sean... he didn't hurt you, did he?"

"Oh, God, no," Aubrey said, laughing out of relief as Derek released a small smile. "Sean barely touched me. It just wasn't right, you know?"

Aubrey looked over only to watch Derek's eyes turn somber. "I know exactly what you mean."

She bit back some smart retort about how she had seen him with another girl the night before and how she had just caught him in a lie, but bit it back and instead focused on Penelope greedily accepting her money back from JJ. Aubrey pointed at her and glared as Penelope ran back to her tech cave, tail tucked between her legs as Derek laughed.

"It's good to have you back, Bree," Derek said affectionately, not overstepping his boundaries. Aubrey smiled at him, but it was forced. She felt a myriad of feelings- grateful for Derek moving on and acting mature, but also disappointment in the fact that he wasn't fighting for her or for them more strongly.

She sighed and followed him into the meeting room, recognizing the fact that she couldn't be greedy about the status of their relationship. The important thing was that he was in her life again, and that's the only thing she could focus on for now.

They took their usual seats around the table, Derek sitting next to Aubrey once more. The only person that seemed surprised by the return to this normal behavior was Spencer, who raised his eyebrows but finally had the decency not to say anything. When all of them were sitting behind the table, JJ finally started her slideshow of horror, as Elle sometimes affectionately called it.

"We've got a case right in Arlington. I'm sure you've heard of it. Three girls, in various stages of what seems like surgery. They're all sliced and cut up, but there's absolutely no pattern to it," Hotchner started off, handing it off to JJ for the specifics.

"This guy doesn't just stab the girls. He cuts them, carves them, skins them, whatever his knife may fancy at the moment," JJ said as she flipped through pictures. Aubrey had to swallow her bile as she squeezed her eyes shut and looked down at the table in front of her, where the three sweet school photos of the girl looked back at her, all blonde hair and blue eyes, all resembling her;

Aubrey blinked quickly, looking up just as fast as Derek looked over at her in concern. She shook her head at him, calling him off her case, before clearing her mind. The chances of there being three girls that looked like her were pretty high. It was just the blonde hair, blue eyes, and not-so-fair complexion that really stuck to her mind and identity and, thus, threw her off.

"We are going to drive a few cars there, so if you guys just want to grab your main stuff, we'll be doing this out of the office for right now," JJ said, bouncing Aubrey back as they split up into SUVs. Aubrey got stuck with Derek, Spencer, and Gideon, and as the three of them discussed their thoughts about the UnSub, Aubrey felt a sick feeling hit her stomach. Whereas she normally felt pity and sympathy for the girls she saw victimized, this was something more than that.

They pulled up in front of the first potential UnSub's house, and as they all got out, Derek pulled Aubrey back. He looked at her with a concerned expression and asked, "Are you okay?"

She wanted to tell him that no, she wasn't okay, but it wasn't the place to do it. So she shook her head and swallowed, saying, "It's just like, something feels weird about this case. I don't know what it is. It's more than the normal disgust and sympathy and whatnot."

"Maybe its the fact that you saw every layer of the human body?" Derek asked as he sort of guided her toward the door without actually touching her.

"Derek, I was going to become a doctor. I've already gone through that trauma so many times I'll probably need therapy for it later on. Something in its essence is like... off, I don't know. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's just how I feel," Aubrey said, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Hey, relax," Derek said in his soothing voice, looking over at her. "I'm sure this is just a regular case."

Aubrey nodded, still doubting Derek's reassuring words as they made their way up to the door of the first suspect, learning he had an alibi for the night of two of the three murders. On the way back to the station, Spencer complained, "I feel like we're going into this pretty blind."

Gideon turned around in his seat to ask him, "What do you mean?"

"We don't even really have a profile. Like, when we get back, can we please just get together and compile a list of what we're looking for? Because right now, we're kind of freeballing it and the authorities aren't helping and we need help," Spencer said. Aubrey, who was sharing the backseat with him, looked over at him in concern. It wasn't usual for Spencer to want back up, as he was usually so self-righteous, he didn't want to admit he couldn't do something himself.

"Sounds good to me," Gideon said as he called Hotchner and told him the plan. Not even twenty minutes later, they were standing before the police department, prepared with a full profile and with a happy, content, and self-satisfied Spencer at their side as Hotchner plunged right into it.

"We're looking for somebody, probably in their late 20s to early 30s, who ran away from home because of previous crimes he had committed, which we're assuming probably has a murder or attempted murder where the weapon was a knife. The shakiness in the first murder implies a newbie, which means it was either one of his first times, or his first time actually killing, so we need to look at both. There was penetration, pre-mortem, on all three bodies, which means we're probably also looking for a rapist," Hotchner said clearly to each of them.

"He most likely lives alone, and probably doesn't make much but does have a regular job, and is probably lower middle class. He likes alcohol and he likes knives, so maybe look at liquor stores, hunting stores, and home accessory stores for purchases from someone like him," Elle contributed.

"That's all we have for you right now. Thank you for your time," Gideon said, effectively dismissing the task force. As the police dwindled away, the BAU rejoined each other and began spitballing ideas again. After a few calls, checks, and false leads, the team besides JJ and Penelope had gathered in the meeting room again to think over more possible suspects as their list had nearly run dry.

JJ, of course, saved them from their dry brain wells.

"Hey, guys, I've got our UnSub's file. This guy is our winner- he has a connection to all three, doesn't have an alibi that can be tracked through the Internet by our local Einsteinette, and he fits every required standard we set in the profile," JJ said as she came in, waving the file around as Penelope came in, hot on her heels, looking panic-stricken. Derek gave her a worried look, but her eyes weren't for him or for Hotchner- they were for Aubrey as she gained her attention with a curious tilt of the head.

"Hey, Aubrey, I need your help with some paperwork real quick, can you come with me?" Penelope asked. Aubrey nodded, her eyebrows furrowed a bit as she walked out after Penelope after quickly checking for permission from Hotchner. JJ quickly closed the door behind her as she met eyes with Hotchner, who straightened almost immediately after realizing Penelope probably didn't have any paperwork she needed help with.

"What's the problem?" Hotchner asked. JJ slid the file to him.

"I had no idea that..." JJ said, swallowing as she looked over at Derek. He stood up suspiciously and walked over to where Hotchner was reading the file. He paled immediately, and Derek spotted the name- one of their suspects for the murders. He had been charged with small things such as petty theft, destruction of property, and possession, but had one outstanding rape and attempted murder charge on his rap sheet that made him fit their current profile.

"What's wrong with it? Is he not our guy?" Derek asked. Hotchner met eyes with JJ again.

"Go give her a different task. Send her to D.C. if you have to. Put her on a different job, we can't have her here while this investigation is going on," Hotchner said. JJ nodded and quickly left, and Derek stole the file from Hotchner's hands. He reached out as if to grab it, but Derek moved gracefully away, his footing from football paying off.

Derek scanned the file, and saw exactly why everyone was tiptoeing around the office now. Right beneath the rape and attempted murder charge laid the victim's name, the last words Derek was expecting.

Aubrey Bentley.


	18. The Confrontation

Derek stared at the name as if he didn't recognize it, but knew it from somewhere else. The shock that overcame him was paralyzing, and his heart dropped down to his feet when he realized that the real reason Aubrey was upset with him was because she had a tragic past just like he did, and he pretended as if he were the only one.

"Shit," Derek said, throwing the file down. He took a seat and grabbed his head in his hands, feeling the tears spring up into his eyes. "I... I can't believe this."

"She never told you about this?" Hotchner asked. Derek shook his head, and Hotchner recognized not only the surprise on his face, but the guilt. He sighed and leant back, saying, "This is the reason you guys broke up, isn't it? Or it has something to do with it?"

"I told her that my shady past overshadowed hers. It doesn't," Derek admitted. Hotchner looked at Derek with concern for the secrets he could tell he was hiding, but he knew that they had to deal with the team's issues as well as Derek and Aubrey's by tackling one secret at a time.

"Morgan, I'm going to have to ask you to stand down on this one right now. This guy is obviously re-enacting what he did to Aubrey. We need to read her case files, re-question character witnesses and everything, and you need to stay passive or else I will take you off this case. Am I clear?" Hotchner asked Derek, drilling a serious stare into his mind.

Swallowing, Derek looked at Hotchner with doubt that he could do everything Hotchner had asked him to do. If he had a chance to lay his hands on Aubrey's attacker, he couldn't promise to restrain himself. But then he realized, by restraining himself, he was ultimately doing Aubrey a favor. By being on the case, he could catch her attacker and finally put him to rest.

So, Derek nodded and told Hotchner, "I promise to behave my best."

"Don't make me regret this, Morgan," Hotchner said, sliding the case under his arm. "Grab everybody, I want them all in the meeting room in five. Make up some errand for Penelope and Aubrey to run. Go make them get us lunch or something. We can't have Aubrey here right now, and if that means sending Penelope off, too, then fine."

"I'm on it," Derek said as he ran around the office, doing as Hotchner asked. Although Aubrey initially fought the idea of going to grab lunch for everybody as she wished to stay and do work, she caved when Penelope offered to take her to her favorite Japanese restaurant. Derek gave Penelope a thankful look as they left, and he raced back to the meeting room where everybody was waiting on him.

"What's all this about?" Spencer, who was, for once, clueless, asked.

"Our UnSub is 34-year-old Henry Davis. He has had a few minor charges, but one outstanding charge on a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl that fit the general description of these girls at the time of her attack," JJ said, looking over at Hotchner. He nodded, and JJ swallowed as she clicked the next slide.

Even Derek winced at the next pictures of Aubrey's crime scene. Gideon sighed and Elle gasped, covering her mouth, while Spencer squinted and asked, "That's not..."

"Aubrey Bentley, age 16 at the time. Her boyfriend, Braden Hill, invited her over one night to spend some time with her when he and his friends attacked her. They were under the influence of PCP at the time, so they felt no pain when she fought back, and they each raped her multiple times before slowly cutting her skin and choking her. Despite the outrageous charges made against them, none received the death penalty and a few received probation many years later. Davis was one of these," JJ said.

"What the hell?" Derek growled. Hotchner gave him a warning look, and Derek barked, "Oh, come on! I'd be pissed even if this wasn't Aubrey's case. How the hell does some creep like this get out of jail when he all but sliced her up?"

"But he did," Spencer said, pointing to the pictures. "The contusions..."

"Spencer," Elle said warningly, her voice hollow as she shook her head, signaling he shouldn't continue with his doctorly explanation of Aubrey's wounds.

"How many guys were involved?" Gideon asked.

"Just four," JJ said, going to list their names.

Derek scoffed. "Just four."

"Agent Morgan," Hotchner said, nearly growling the game as he met steely gazes with Derek. Spencer, who was sitting between the two, slowly slid his chair back to get out of the line of fire. Hotchner continued by saying, "If you think none of us want to see this man so far behind bars he can't see any light, you're wrong, but you're actin unprofessional. I will send you home if you continue to act like this. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes," Derek said like the sullen teenager he was. The door to the meeting room opened, and JJ quickly shut out of the pictures, a movement Derek appreciated. Aubrey wouldn't want anyone else to know that the UnSub's victimology was inspired by her.

"Agent Hotchner," one of the techs said, "the police just brought in your Henry Davis. He's in the interrogation room."

"Thank you, William," Hotchner said, grabbing his case files. "JJ, Spencer, I want to see what else you guys can pull. Elle, stay here and make sure if Aubrey gets back, she doesn't make it to the investigation room. Derek, Gideon, you're with me."

Derek followed Hotchner to the investigation room, Gideon right behind them as Derek spotted the guy who had attacked his girlfriend. He hadn't actually seen the guy's mugshot, so he was kind of surprised when he saw a clean-cut attractive guy sitting with his handcuffed wrists on the table, twiddling his thumbs. He looked calm, and that pissed Derek off even further.

He reached for the doorknob leading into the investigation room, but Hotchner stopped him by saying, "Gideon's going to go in there first."

Derek seethed for a few seconds before asking through clenched teeth, "Why?"

"He's going to play some mind games," Hotchner said as he nodded at Gideon, who went into the investigation room and began questioning as he did. Halfway through, Hotchner turned to Derek and said, "You know I can't have you go in there."

"Then why did you even bring me here?" Derek asked, annoyed.

"I wanted to make you see how to keep a professional facade on. Aubrey is more of a daughter to Gideon than his actual children are. You think he's not furious inside, doesn't want to reach over and strangle that guy like you do?" Hotchner asked, turning to Derek. "I hired you for your passion, Derek. Don't let it get in your way."

"Hey, Hotch," a feminine voice said from the doorway. Both Derek and Hotchner turned and saw with surprise that Aubrey was the one walking into the observatory room. Derek reacted faster; he quickly grabbed Aubrey by the waist and pulled her back out as she protested. Hotchner followed Derek out and Aubrey stared angrily at them both.

"What the hell, you guys? What's so secretive in there that I can't know about it?" Aubrey asked. Hotchner and Derek shared a look, obviously trying to come up with a lie on the spot. Aubrey crossed her arms over her chest and said, "You guys can't pull a lie out of your asses to save your lives. If my life is ever in trouble, let Penelope or JJ handle it, please. Now, if you excuse me..."

Aubrey tried to push past them to the investigation room to see what was going on in there that they didn't want her to know about. Derek and Hotchner both stopped her this time as they heard a door open behind them. Thinking it was just the recorder walking out of the room to see what was going on, they watched as Aubrey looked past them and her anger left her face. Derek and Hotchner both turned and saw JJ walking out with two guards and one of Aubrey's rapists, who saw her and grinned sadistically.

"Good to see you, darling," he said, his eyes twinkling with malice. Before Derek and Hotchner were aware of what was happening, Aubrey had already knocked aside the two guards and knocked down her assailant as she began wailing on him.

The guards went to pull her off, but Hotchner's heart tugged as he yelled, "Wait!"

Everybody stood back as Aubrey landed punches and scratches on her rapist until blood was squirting out of every orifice of his face. Hotchner waved his hand and Derek rushed forward to pull Aubrey away as the two guards helped the rapist up. He spat in Aubrey's general direction and said, "You were a crazy whore anyway. Braden was right to want to show you a lesson."

"Hey, get him out of here before I start beating him, too," Derek growled, still trying to keep Aubrey under control. When her perp was out of the hallway, she stopped resisting and slumped down to the ground. Derek fixed his hold on her so she fell into him instead, crying. He leant down and swept her off her feet, holding her bridal-style while she hid her face in his chest. Hotchner offered to help, but Derek shook his head and made it all the way to the car, sliding Aubrey in and driving her back to her apartment.

She was all out of tears by the time they arrived, and Derek turned off the car. They sat in silence for a few moments before Derek asked softly, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Same reason you didn't tell me any of your secrets," Aubrey said simply in a clipped tone. "Thanks for the ride home."

She got out of the car, and so did Derek. He walked quickly after her, nearly running just to keep up as he told her, "What if I told you everything?"

Aubrey laughed harshly, turning to face Derek as she did so. She met his eyes angrily, clashing with him as she told him, "You think that will fix it? You think that will fix not only what just happened, but will also fix what happened to us? While the whole reason our relationship didn't work out was your inability to tell me anything, whether it be your favorite color or the big secrets you're hiding from everybody, simply telling me now won't do anything."

"Then what will fix it?" Derek asked, walking slowly toward Aubrey till her back hit a wall. He put a hand on her waist, the other on the wall behind her as she still glared at him. "Tell me, Bree. What will fix us?"

"Nothing," she told him. Tears filled her eyes again, and she shook her head. "Nothing can fix us, fix me, fix you. We're both broken, separately, together, whatever."

"We can work together to fix this, I promise you," Derek said. Aubrey began crying again, lowering her head. Derek tipped her head back up as he squeezed her side, promising her, "I would never even dream of hurting you."

Aubrey broke. Derek wrapped her up in his arms and held her tight, resting his head upon hers as she grasped at him for comfort. He shushed her and rocked her and kissed the top of her head until the cries grew steadily quieter. Derek picked her up bridal-style again and entered the elevator, taking her into her apartment and lying her down on her bed. He went to go leave the room to go wait on the couch, but Aubrey called him back with a simple "Der."

Derek turned toward Aubrey, his heart breaking when he saw the mascara-melted, puffy-eyed, runny-nosed mess his girl, one of if not the strongest girl he had ever met, had become. He walked back over to the bed and sat in front of her as she played with the comforter. He waited patiently for her next words, before she looked up at him and said, "Can you stay here?"

"Of course. I'll just be out-"

Aubrey grabbed his hand that he started to move to point to the living room. Derek turned toward Aubrey and nodded, understanding what she meant. He pulled up a chair from the corner to the side of her bed, watching her sleep. He was glad she had invited him in; he was paranoid one of the guys who had helped Aubrey's ex would come in the middle of the night to rid of her.

Derek fell to sleep with the assurance that his love was safe.


End file.
